Allergies Shmallergies

Today is ice cream day at Leah's preschool. They're learning about children from other lands, and today they get to make ice cream by rolling cream and sugar around in coffee cans. (I'm not sure what country this represents? Is ice cream indigenous to somewhere?) For the normal parent and normal child, that would be a very fun activity. Those creative cooking projects were going to be my forte' as a mom. I always looked forward to rolling out sugar cookies with my kids, teaching them how to make teddy bear bread like my mom taught me, and Jon and I even joked that our child would be a talking cheese encyclopedia--first word, "gruyere", etc... Well, unlucky for us, our darling curly girly has severe allergies to wheat, dairy, nuts, and eggs, and all incarnations of said foods. Which means just about everything. So when I arrived at preschool this morn and realized I had forgotten to bring her Raspberry Gelato Classico (thanks, Costco!) or her Strawberry Soy Dream, I was momentarily crestfallen. But then I realized that I could just head over to the neighborhood Bel Aire and get her something tasty and cold to recompense.

After the whole get-the-sorbet-and-go-back-to-preschool-and-endure-the-separation-anxiety-once-more ordeal (did i overuse the hyphen, or what?), I was driving home and just got a little melancholy. What would it be like to have a kid who could eat a PB&J? (Or my personal fave, PB&Honey...) How would it be to go to a restaurant and order a kid's meal, or a birthday party and not have to bring special rice krispie treats? Or not cry in the frozen foods aisle at Trader Joe's when I read the ingredients of their Chicken Taquitos for the gazillionth time and realize they have changed recipes and now make Leah's one-and-only yummiest food with wheat starch? Or not have to bring brown rice bread to church every Sunday so your little girl can actually take the sacrament? Or take your toddler to the hospital after an anaphylactic reaction to spelt noodles? The list could go on forever, and I don't intend to wallow in this post. But somehow getting the sad things out on paper--ha!--computer is therapeutic to me "at this juncture."

What are the happy things?

Leah has Barbies who have allergies. (There is nothing more adorable than hearing her explain to that Barbie's friends that she can't have certain foods because they make her tummy sick. But maybe she'll outgrow them someday!

And I think her new Cabbage Patch, Claudia Fernanda, has allergies too.

I've invented a few tasty recipes for soy butter chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin cookies, and berry muffins---sans wheat, dairy, nuts, and eggs! (They are actually muy delicioso!)

In-n-Out Burger has an extremely limited menu, and therefore doesn't fry anything breaded in the oil with their french fries, so Leah gets to eat them! And she can down two meat patties (sans fillers) in about 20 seconds flat. (Even Esther eats two patties!) [One HUGE reason we can't move out of this state!]

She is aware that foods have the potential to be dangerous to her--much better than when she was younger and automatically put everything in her mouth. When she went trick-or-treating, she asked every single person, "Is this allergies?" She got a lot of blank stares, but after I explained, most people took huge pity on her and gave her two or more of the non-allergy selection (nerds, skittles, starburst, smarties, dum dums---gotta love those companies!)

Anyway, I'm feeling better now, and it's almost time to go pick that cutie up from preschool! I bet her Haagen Daz peach sorbet beat the socks off of the other kids' ice cream!