Skip to main content

Day 15 &16

We're continuing with the day 2-3 allergic symptoms, but otherwise in GREAT spirits. I cannot believe that Christmas is only days away, where has this year gone? The lights outside are adorned with happiness and joy, and I cannot help but to feel completely in the spirit of the moment. One of our neighbors made us allergen -safe holiday treats for the family, and we've been surrounded by the kindness and efforts of so many. Christmas is my favorite holiday and the BEST time of the year. People give more and acknowledge their own many blessings, and they make real efforts to accommodate people in challenging situations. There is just a noble spirit of goodness around.

When you are a mother with young children, people are so quick to give out advice in the hopes that they can teach you something about parenting, or that their years of experience justify a level of almost "professional experience". The truth is that no two kids are the same (especially ones with food allergies) or respond to the same methods. Whether it be some new-found answer to everything or something that worked in the past for someone else. Parents of children living with food allergies are traveling on a new unchartered path. The way things have always been done, quite frequently, doesn't pertain to us. The worries every parent has are amplified with the additional worries we carry. Sometimes in life we graduate from the "question asker" to the "answer giver". For the most part, a parent of a child with a FA bears the responsibility of feeling like the question asker but always having to be the answer giver.  We have to take on all of the responsibility for everyone in our children's lives.

With the spirit of this beautiful holiday,  I am so grateful to all of the people that have been open to my instructions and guidance in the matter of Food Allergies, knowing that I am coming at this from a loving disposition.  This holiday can be wrapped up in egg nog and chocolate covered everything, making it very dangerous for a little girl living with a life-threatening food allergy to milk proteins. One thing that is true about all parents, and can be passed down to anyone, is to speak up for your child because you are their voice and their advocate more than anyone else will ever be. We appreciate all of the efforts to "ask questions" going around to keep our family safe this holiday season.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun! (Even ones with Life Threatening Food Allergies)

Three years ago, we walked into our local Claires Store. My ,then, 4 year old had accomplished the scholastic feat of learning all of her continents, oceans, and the entire milky way!  I had been prodding her growth with promises of something from the store, as a sort of reward. Claires ( http://www.claires.com)  is such a fun store for girls, and the girlie side of us women! My daughters made their way through the sparkle and frills and back to the Disney princess lip-glosses for kids. I bought one and thought "it worked! The knowledge and the bribe were complete!" But, as she ripped off the wrapping to her new lipgloss in the car and applied her new sparkly, "fun" lip gloss--our worlds changed! Her face began to swell with hives. I was driving and looking back on her telling me something was wrong and what I saw made me grow scared, really, really scared.  I pulled over and jumped out of my vehicle and got to her. I wiped off the lipgloss and washed her face with

Can We Really Have It All?

We Can All "Have It All" So do you believe women can have it all? Can anyone? Isn't there an opportunity cost to everything? Do some people "have it all", or is it just the opportunity cost playing a lesser role in their priorities. I don't really think anybody "has it all". I think everything is a matter of perspective, and subject to your value system.   We are raised within this capitalistic, media driven perception that we want to be rich, famous, beautiful, have "things, be "someone" etc. Aren't we already someone? In our own little world's, aren't  we are all of those roles to someone? We are wealthier than someone, idealized by someone, have a "better" job than someone, everything is a perception we either value and hold onto tightly, or we don't and we develop an attitude of complaining that, I've seen, last a lifetime. What's real? Shouldn't we seek the blessings in our circumstances ins

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words?

The Story Behind the Picture    I  worry sometimes that this media sensationalized, ideal sense of "perfection" is vitally harming the younger generations. "Perfection" is a feeling, not an image. Feeling everything is going "perfectly" etc. But, we live in a materialistic, superficial world- where we are innately taught to perceive ourselves by our struggles or shortcomings, instead of searching for our gifts. We all have special gifts, and I hope our new growing generation learns to see beneath the surface enough to notice that in each other. It's not that everyone is the same and everyone deserves a trophy (and that whole plethora of an argument), it's more about appreciating differences and learning to seek the gift of individuality. There's a BIG difference. Our kids are being raised in a global, e-commerce, social media driven, multicultural world. We need to stay current with the changing world when raising kids today, in order to prote