Quinoa = Pukey Fail

::sigh::  Another fail. 

I was so proud of myself today.  I tinkered with a recipe I found for quinoa muffins and made some pretty darn edible blueberry muffins for Cutie Pie.  They looked like muffins.  They were tasty.  My three year old ate one.  Cutie Pie was not impressed.  She took one bite, spit it out, gave me a death stare, and threw the rest on the floor.  I chalked it up to being picky and it being a new flavor and texture for her so I mixed some quinoa into her beets and zucchini afterwards - she ate it all up.  Almost two hours on the dot later the puking started (and of course since she had beets for dinner it was all a lovely red/pink color).  She puked five or six times and then it was over.  I cleaned her up, cleaned me up, and sat down.  She puked one more time and then it was like nothing happened.  Once it was all out of her system she was as happy as could be. 

I'm sure it was the quinoa.  At least it is something that is easy to avoid I guess.  Most companies don't seem to hide quinoa in their foods that I  know of.  But this also means another week of no new foods to give her time to rest which means we are just that much more behind in getting her to a normal diet.  :(  And to top that off she hates her iron supplements - wastes at least half a bottle if it has the drops in it so I am afraid that her anemia is going to get worst with no drops and her only high-iron food so far being a fail.  I think we are going to *have* to introduce a meat next and pray #1 that it is a pass and #2 that she will actually eat it.  I really think Cutie Pie thinks she should get to eat nothing but breastmilk and CheeCha puffs all day long!

I Am No Chef...

I am a good cook.  I enjoy cooking meals for my family, and frankly I'd like to think I'm pretty good at it.  People always seem excited to see what I bring to pot luck dinners.  My friends compliment my food all the time.  But apparently, I am completely inept at making pancakes! 

We are trying to introduce quinoa this week with Cutie Pie.  It has super high levels of iron (twice that of spinach!) and is also a complete protein - two things her diet is seriously lacking.  It is also pretty versatile and can be ground into a flour to make things like pancakes and muffins.  I had such high hopes.  During my first attempt I thought it would be easier to just cook it on the waffle maker.  Bad idea.  It completely stuck to both sides and I had to scrape it off in little bits with a fork.  So the second attempt I thought I'd just make regular pancakes.  They stuck to the pan and burnt (insert convincing statements to hubby as to why we need an electric griddle).  Then hubby decided to try his hand at pancake making - burned his batch too.  At least *I* didn't fill the kitchen with smoke.  ;)  So finally I thought if I maybe thickened up the batter a little and put it in the toaster oven I could maybe bake it like a cookie.  I lined the little cookie sheet with aluminum foil made a little cookie-sized drop of batter, turned the toaster oven on to about 350 and sat and watched it.  After maybe 5ish minutes it started to look set, so I pulled it out and let it cool and managed to pull it off the aluminum foil in edible pieces!  It sure didn't look all that pretty, and not really sure how it smelled because the kitchen still smells like burnt pancakes, but it worked I guess.  Cutie Pie even ate a few pieces! 

So I'm thinking I need a new recipe or I need to alter the one I've got.  Anyone got a good quinoa muffin/pancake/cookie recipe they can share with me? 

What is Normal?

It's been a frustrating day on the FPIES front.  Cutie Pie had her 9 month check-up today.  She has dropped from the 90th percentile in weight to the 50th and dropped from the 50th percentile in height to the 20th.  They also tested her hemoglobin (indicator for iron levels) and she tested at a 9.2 which is below normal.  Our pediatrician would like her levels to be between 11 and 14.  I feel like if it isn't one thing it's another.  I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to brainstorm ways to get more food, better food, nutritious food into her system.  The pediatrician gave us some samples of an iron supplement - but lo and behold the 2nd ingredient is High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Modified food starch is also on the list.  I spent the afternoon on the phone with the company, and sure enough - MFS is corn based.  Now the quest begins to find a supplement that she can tolerate and then I have to spend another week that I could/should be used to trial an actual food to trial some stupid iron supplement.  Then this evening she had a really runny, stringy, gross diaper (my wonderful husband changed it, but from his description and the string of "EWWWW"s that I heard coming from Cutie Pie's room I'm sure it also included mucus).  Maybe from blueberries?  The Hep B shot she had today?  I swear we just can't ever get ahead of this stupid FPIES disaster!

I found myself today feeling sorry for myself and wondering why I couldn't just once have a "normal" kid.  One that would actually agree to be born naturally.  One who had no food issues.  One that would sleep.  But really - what human being fits into a generalized mold of normal?  Certainly not me.  Not my husband.  Really, not anyone that I know.  So then I started to think about what "normal" meant to us.  Here is what I came up with:

Normal is.....
-   reading food labels on EVERYTHING and actually calling the companies personally to ask questions about ingredients.
- analyzing every dirty diaper for traces of blood/mucus/yuck factor
- Contemplating taking photos of diapers when they are full of blood/mucus/yuck
- Planning meals/activities so we will be home shortly afterwards just in case of a reaction
- Cooking three separate meals every night for dinner.
- Dreaming about Mexican rice smothered in cheese and waking up *almost* satisfied of my cravings
- anything but "normal"

Yay Apples!

This week we decided to trail a fruit.  Our allergist wanted us to run through the green veggies and then orange veggies before moving on to fruit, but I've never really been a good listener.  :)  I've been wanting to move towards giving her breakfast, lunch, and dinner while we eat and thought fruit is just more appropriate for breakfast than a vegetable.  (Yeah, I'm pretty good at justifying my rebellion!).  But aside from making her slightly constipated apples have gone GREAT!  In fact, she is actually sleeping much better this week than she has in the past few months.  All week she has slept in her bed all night - only waking once or twice due to a lost binky. 

So we are officially calling apples a pass which means we are now topping the charts with a record SIX safe foods!  They are:  avocado, zucchini, beets, white potato, butternut squash, and apples.  Next on the horizon we plan on trialing broccoli.  Little miss Cutie Pie is in an independent streak and would much rather feed herself so we thought broccoli would be a good one for her to self feed.  We eat a lot of broccoli in our house (it is big brother's favorite veggie) so we know she is okay with it through my milk.  Plus it's another high fiber food in case we run into more constipation as we introduce fruits.  From our previous attempts at starting solids it was pears and prunes that caused horrible tummy issues - foods not normally associated with constipation.  Our allergist wasn't convinced it was related to FPIES, but I'm not convinced it wasn't.  Who knows. 

Being a Good Mom Sucks.

Today has been a rough day for me.  I am so tired of trying to do it all.  I've been snappy with my kids, hateful to my husband, and I just feel like locking myself in the bathroom and crying.  And it doesn't help that I ran out of diet coke yesterday.  And then we drove through Wendy's for lunch and after making sure they understood I needed a HAMburger not a CHEESEburger. I get home to find my burger has cheese on it.  Grr. 

Earlier this evening I was thinking about how hard it is to be a good mom.  I take pride in the fact that I am a good mom to my two babies.  Cutie Pie and Little Man are lucky.  I'm not perfect by any means, but dang it I'm pretty good.  But in the right now I am semi-jealous of my lousy mom facebook friends.  You all know the ones.  They post pictures of themselves drinking and partying almost every day.  They talk all the time about going out with friends and you know they leave their kids with whoever agrees to watch them.  They don't even think twice about what their kids eat or drink.  They post witty comments their kids say which usually includes cussing or mean-ness.  They are the kind of moms you wonder how God would trust them with a child.  They are the moms you KEEP as facebook friends just so you can remind yourself what a good job you are doing with your own kids. 

But I think us "good" moms put waaaaaaaay too much pressure on ourselves.  Today I cried numerous times because I am starting to seriously consider switching Cutie Pie to formula.  I feel an incredible amount of guilt even thinking about it.  Today it even got as far as looking at formula at the grocery store and *almost* buying a can to try.  I mean here is this beautiful little girl who is nine months old and can eat all of five foods.  She wakes up numerous times every night just needing to be held to feel better.  She depends on me to keep her alive and I can't do a simple thing like skip some of the foods I enjoy eating?!?!  How selfish is that of me? 

I've always heard to never quit on a bad day and today was most definitely a bad day.  Maybe tomorrow. 

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies EVER

I stumbled upon a recipe for chocolate chip cookies the other day and it set off an INTENSE craving, so I decided to alter the recipe to make it something I can eat and boy were they delicious!!!  So here it is - dairy, soy, rice, oat, corn free cookies:

Ingredients:
1 cup Spectrum brand Organic shortening
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup almond milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 bag Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips

Directions:
1.  Cream sugars and shortening until fluffy and smooth.
2.  Add milk and vanilla and mix.
3.  In a separate bowl mix flour, salt, and baking soda.  Slowly add to wet ingredients and mix with a big spoon.
4.  Fold in chocolate chips.
5.  Using your hands, roll a small ball of dough, flatten it, and put on a cookie sheet (this helped me avoid the need for cooking spray and/or parchment paper which I didn't have on hand)
6.  Bake at 350 for 11 minutes

Safe Perfection!!

Yikes, Squash!

Beets were a pass I think.  Maybe if I could convince little Miss Cutie Pie to actually eat them I might be able to have a better grasp on the reality of them actually being a pass, but whatever.  I guess it doesn't really matter if they are a pass if she won't actually eat more than a bite or two of them.  It's not like I have to look for beets hidden into foods, but if we do come across that I guess we will still be safe. 

So we decided to move on.  I figured that since zucchini was a big hit and a successful pass that possibly regular butternut squash would be good too!  So today I baked up a huge squash, pureed some, cubed up some, and gave Cutie Pie a tiny spoon full.  She wasn't thrilled.  Lately she isn't thrilled about ANYTHING on a spoon.  Little Miss Independent would rather feed herself.  However, she did eat her spoon full of squash in between bites of CheeCha puffs (God's gift to FPIES!).  She did fine with them at first, but about an hour and a half later she got those bright red slapped cheeks just like when I eat peas.  It was her only symptom.  She was acting fine, happy, pooped normally this afternoon, ate fine the rest of the night but those cheeks make me nervous!  I've been really slack about keeping up with my own food journal because things have been going so smoothly lately.  I haven't really felt the need to journal since we are at such a good spot with my diet and cutting out things that seem to cause a problem.  (However, this weekend I did eat some pea pods and Cutie Pie was showing off those slapped red cheeks on Saturday!!), but maybe I need to start again just to make sure it is actually the squash and not something I am eating. 

We will keep going, because some slapped cheeks aren't enough to make me stop trialing but I think we will make sure we are home for several hours after her eating her daily share of squash.  Reactions are scary enough - I cannot imagine what I would do if it happened while we were out and about running errands or playing!! 

Yay for Potatoes!

For the past week we have been trialing potatoes.  From what I've heard from other FPIES mommies, they are an easy pass for most and opens up a whole new world of food choices.  Luckily, they were a pass for us too!!  Cutie Pie isn't too thrilled about the texture, but if I thin them enough or mix them with her zucchini (also officially a pass!) she chows down on them!  I am so excited - this means we can now try stuff with potato flour, or try Checha puffs (cracker things made from potato), potato pancakes, the list goes on and on!  I am so thrilled! 

This week we are going to try beets.  I have never in my life eaten or cooked a beet, but why not.  They are supposedly packed with fiber and calcium and are a pretty red color.  How many times have I heard you need to eat a rainbow of food to cover your nutrients?  Probably a million.  So a new color for Cutie Pie it is! Here is to hoping that she likes it and it is a pass too.  We are on a roll right now!