Food is an Issue

Food is a HUGE issue at our house.  It took us 6 painful weeks to realize my youngest is violently intolerant to wheat, nearly 3 years to realize he's intolerant to milk, and nearly SIX years to realize that our middle son is intolerant to both wheat and milk.

We do not have happy associations with food in our home.  We scream a lot about food in our home, but not as much as we used to.  For years, I was deaf in my left ear (the side I carry kids on) because of all the screaming, now understood to be about being in pain because of food.

So, we have 'adventures' with food in our house.  Screaming, crying, running away, occasionally barfing (although that's becoming less frequent, hallelujah!).  But slowly we are learning to like things besides peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  In fact, both of my Pickies (who are the Intolerant Ones) will now eat pineapple!  I can tell you there was a time (years, in fact) I didn't think we'd ever graduate from bananas!  This is huge!  I skip and dance whenever I think of it!

Interesting things still occasionally crop up, and I still learn new things (like muffins made with non-dairy creamer are better than muffins made with rice milk, but in either case, you have to add an extra egg).

My dream is that some day, dinner together will be the fun, happy, sharing, family-coming-together time that I remember from my childhood & still see on re-runs of Leave it to Beaver.

But for now, each day we get through a meal and everyone isn't crying at the end, I think is a pretty good day!