Buzz was telling me on the way home from preschool today about how they were studying what happened on the first Easter. Apparently she is under the impression that after Jesus died, he got arrested.
Been offline again for a while...kinda lost the last few weeks in a blur of the usual events plus taxes, the end of the Girl Scout cookie sale (whew!) and several sessions of Cub Scout training. No, that's not a typo. I was recently asked to chair the pack committee for our local Cub unit, which involves a big learning curve for a woman with four daughters. Until last week my only personal experience with the BSA consisted of the fact that my dad did a stint as my older brother's den parent when I was about five or six, which I remember only because of the time they did a candle-making activity which ended in my father's setting the kitchen floor on fire. After about six hours of introductory training, though, I have to admit being grudgingly impressed with the organization, and I am sure that if I go at it with the right attitude I will get a lot out of the experience.
Anyway, getting back to the fun of life with four daughters, I thought I'd put up this little piece of performance art created by Buzz and Aslan a few days ago. I think they are doing a nice job of not allowing themselves to be pigeonholed into conventional stereotypes of princess behavior. Enjoy!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Splitting Heirs
Well, Mom has been asking for more pictures, so here goes. Last week Bookworm requested a short haircut, which suited her father and me as it also seemed to be the only way to keep her from chewing on her hair. I told her I'd take her to the Hair Cuttery as the poor kid has inherited my straight, impossible-to-do-anything-with locks, but she protested that she hated their shampoos and begged me to do it. Flattering, yes, but also nerve-wracking. Anyway, here is the transformation:
And in the grand tradition of keeping up with your big sister, I immediately had two more haircut requests from the peanut gallery:
So I guess if the teaching thing doesn't pan out for me, I can always go to work for the Hair Cuttery. As a shampooer.
And in the grand tradition of keeping up with your big sister, I immediately had two more haircut requests from the peanut gallery:
So I guess if the teaching thing doesn't pan out for me, I can always go to work for the Hair Cuttery. As a shampooer.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Priorities
I think one of the reasons I put off answering letters and emails from friends is that I always feel like I have to start them with an explanapology for the length of time it has been since the last time I wrote. Frankly, I feel that part of the problem is that I have been privileged to travel and live in a number of different places in my nearly four decades, and in so doing have been blessed with a large number of really wonderful people with whom I would like to remain in touch. I just don’t manage my time well enough to write that many letters. My mom is quick to point out that I have four young children, and certainly my family takes up the lion’s share of my time, but the bottom line is that I just don’t get around to it.
This blog is already starting to fall into a similar pattern. Some days it just seems more important to go to the gym, do laundry, or even sleep instead of writing during what little time I have without interruptions. I’m not intending any judgments here on the relative merits of these activities. I have noticed, however, that in a few short weeks blogging has become one of the things I miss when I don’t get to it. I find the writing itself satisfying, but in a way that is very different from the journaling I’ve done in the past. The fact that these words are written to be hung out in cyberspace for anyone to read, even if not many actually bother, makes each post feel a little like a letter to the many friends to whom I so rarely manage even an email update, but of whom I think frequently and often miss fiercely.
The above paragraphs, for what it’s worth, have nothing whatsoever to do with anything I was planning to write when I sat down, or with the number of entries I have composed in my head over the course of the last few days but have not yet managed to commit to electrons. But suddenly I can’t stop. And I have to add here that the pair of eyes that today I feel reading over my shoulder belong to one correspondent with whom I have had pathetically few exchanges in the ten years since he left this mortal existence. I thought of him quite a bit this afternoon as I sat in a college classroom for the first time in years, wondering what this veteran of some thirty-three Ph.D. defenses would have thought of my husband’s performance today as he successfully presented his case for the completion of his own. Dad never got to meet my husband—I found him just weeks too late for that—though I’ve always been sure they’d have liked each other. Quite aside from the shared penchant for bad puns and the hard-luck Cleveland Indians (makes me feel sympathy for Ron Weasley’s loyalty to the Chudley Cannons), they also had in common a passion for music that runs deeply. My last conversation with Dad, the evening after our first date, featured a fair amount of gushing about my new cellist beau’s musical talent. When I went home for Dad’s funeral four days later, I found in his CD changer a two-disc set of Pablo Casals playing the Bach cello suites.
My mother and in-laws have always been awesome and attentive grandparents, and over the eight years since I became a mother the moments of poignancy when I regret that my dad has never gotten to play and sing with my daughters have gotten a little rarer. Today has been the first time in a while that it hit me again how much I miss getting to share my husband with him as well. All three parents remaining here with us were lavish with their praise when we called this afternoon with the news that the dissertation was accepted, the five-year journey almost over. Mom was quick to add that she was sure Dad was bragging to all the angels about the accomplishment of his hardworking son-in-law, who managed this feat while working full-time as a high-school administrator and busy father. I know that she’s right. When the Doc’s advisor commented on how quickly he always turned around requests for revisions (eight hours after the defense ended, he is already done with the few changes the committee told him to make before final submission), I could just hear Dad muttering under his breath about some of the students he’d advised who were, shall we say, less prompt. Dad would understand on every level the blood and sweat that went into this unrelenting document. As someone for whom teaching was a true vocation, I know Dad would have been incredibly proud of my husband, as I am, and would probably by now have been well underway to memorializing the occasion in doggerel verse. I wish that the Doc could hear him, as I do, chuckling under his breath as he composes it.
To those friends I never write: I haven’t forgotten you guys either.
This blog is already starting to fall into a similar pattern. Some days it just seems more important to go to the gym, do laundry, or even sleep instead of writing during what little time I have without interruptions. I’m not intending any judgments here on the relative merits of these activities. I have noticed, however, that in a few short weeks blogging has become one of the things I miss when I don’t get to it. I find the writing itself satisfying, but in a way that is very different from the journaling I’ve done in the past. The fact that these words are written to be hung out in cyberspace for anyone to read, even if not many actually bother, makes each post feel a little like a letter to the many friends to whom I so rarely manage even an email update, but of whom I think frequently and often miss fiercely.
The above paragraphs, for what it’s worth, have nothing whatsoever to do with anything I was planning to write when I sat down, or with the number of entries I have composed in my head over the course of the last few days but have not yet managed to commit to electrons. But suddenly I can’t stop. And I have to add here that the pair of eyes that today I feel reading over my shoulder belong to one correspondent with whom I have had pathetically few exchanges in the ten years since he left this mortal existence. I thought of him quite a bit this afternoon as I sat in a college classroom for the first time in years, wondering what this veteran of some thirty-three Ph.D. defenses would have thought of my husband’s performance today as he successfully presented his case for the completion of his own. Dad never got to meet my husband—I found him just weeks too late for that—though I’ve always been sure they’d have liked each other. Quite aside from the shared penchant for bad puns and the hard-luck Cleveland Indians (makes me feel sympathy for Ron Weasley’s loyalty to the Chudley Cannons), they also had in common a passion for music that runs deeply. My last conversation with Dad, the evening after our first date, featured a fair amount of gushing about my new cellist beau’s musical talent. When I went home for Dad’s funeral four days later, I found in his CD changer a two-disc set of Pablo Casals playing the Bach cello suites.
My mother and in-laws have always been awesome and attentive grandparents, and over the eight years since I became a mother the moments of poignancy when I regret that my dad has never gotten to play and sing with my daughters have gotten a little rarer. Today has been the first time in a while that it hit me again how much I miss getting to share my husband with him as well. All three parents remaining here with us were lavish with their praise when we called this afternoon with the news that the dissertation was accepted, the five-year journey almost over. Mom was quick to add that she was sure Dad was bragging to all the angels about the accomplishment of his hardworking son-in-law, who managed this feat while working full-time as a high-school administrator and busy father. I know that she’s right. When the Doc’s advisor commented on how quickly he always turned around requests for revisions (eight hours after the defense ended, he is already done with the few changes the committee told him to make before final submission), I could just hear Dad muttering under his breath about some of the students he’d advised who were, shall we say, less prompt. Dad would understand on every level the blood and sweat that went into this unrelenting document. As someone for whom teaching was a true vocation, I know Dad would have been incredibly proud of my husband, as I am, and would probably by now have been well underway to memorializing the occasion in doggerel verse. I wish that the Doc could hear him, as I do, chuckling under his breath as he composes it.
To those friends I never write: I haven’t forgotten you guys either.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Snow Daze
Words to live by from the dinner table this evening:
Buzz (to Bookworm): Hey, I’m going to whisper something in your ear.
Bookworm: Finish chewing your broccoli first.
***********************
I’m not terribly surprised by the fact that I didn’t find time to write this weekend. I went to the gym on Saturday, cleaned house, and went to a concert with the Doc. Sunday is always a full day, and with church in the afternoon now it feels like it goes by even faster. But I wish I knew what happened to the two snow days!
Wouldn’t you know it would take until March to get our first real snowfall this season? Bookworm watches weather reports avidly, and is quick to flush an ice cube at the first sign there might be some wintry precip. She also does a mean snow dance. She used to wear her pajamas inside out—all of this was inspired by her bus driver, who was probably almost as eager for a snow day as the kids—but that must have been too irritating even for a chance at snow angels. Anyway, the weather wasn’t her doing this time. She was actually quite put out, as Monday was Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and was therefore to have been a “Reading Day,” when the kids were invited to wear comfy clothes, bring a stuffed animal and their favorite books, and have a carpet picnic while spending the day immersed in the printed word. This is Bookworm’s idea of a great day at school. Not even the promise of possible snow playtime really reconciled her to missing Reading Day until we also promised to have a picnic in the living room. So she spent a good part of the morning reading to her sisters, and lunchtime found us on a beach blanket, with sandwiches (egg and soy free), apple slices and popcorn. Since I had my hands full keeping them from knocking over drink glasses, we didn’t have any books at the picnic; instead, Bookworm suggested we could tell picnic stories. Hers was remarkably autobiographical, but with character names artfully borrowed from a book she was reading that morning. Of course, once she told one, everyone else had to have a turn too. Small wonder that we whiled away a fair amount of the remaining afternoon.
Somehow the rest of the time vanished among an assortment of other small projects. With four kids in the house we always have projects, and with four kids in the house we’ve learned it helps to keep them small. Spot’s was learning to scoot. With three older sisters in constant orbit, she’s always been pretty motivated to move, beginning with barrel rolls at about three months. Now she does some rocking an all fours, but not having yet quite figured out what to do with her legs, she generally resorts to a reverse army crawl across any open space until she hitches up against a sofa or family member.
Buzz’s project was changing clothes about three times an hour. I’ve heard friends complain about having kids with this impulse, but only recently has it really hit home. Buzz has always been my most fashion conscious—one of the aides at her preschool told me that the day isn’t complete until she gets a chance to see the outfit Buzz has come up with this time—but lately, after going through and trying on half the outfits she can reach (and depositing the unfit in a heap on the floor) she tends to end up wearing one of the same two or three things anyway. Since even at my best I’m not doing laundry every other day (though it can be close), this means that more often than not she is digging through the hamper to retrieve the red floral leggings she wore yesterday, her only concession being that she will wear a different shirt. Worse, she’s figured out that if she puts on something else in the morning, then changes right after lunch while I’m getting the baby ready to drive her to preschool, I don’t have the time to bully her into changing without the risk of missing the kiss-and-ride window. She knows that as long as it’s not her Tinker Bell nightgown, I’ll cave rather than have to park, get everybody out of their car seats, and march all three musketeers across the parking lot. One of Monday morning’s projects for me was swapping out some increasingly snug items from each of the girls’ drawers with others that had been too big last fall. Buzz, going to her dresser to answer a midday whim strike, found a shirt she’d never seen before (except on Bookworm two years ago, but who remembers that) and went into an ecstasy of gratitude for her new adornment. I was pleased that she said thanks without being prompted, but I knew I was in trouble when at dinner time she glowed aloud again and then exclaimed, “Mom, I want to wear this to school tomorrow and show all my friends and teachers my beautiful new shirt!” Undeterred by my pointing out that she’d worn it all afternoon and that it now had rice stuck to it, she brushed it off and promised to be more careful. With preschoolers like this, who needs teenagers?
Aslan, aside from shadowing Buzz anytime a change in wardrobe involved a fairy tale she felt like being involved in, also whittled away at my remaining energy and nerves by once more resisting any attempt to get her to use the toilet. While she mastered the mechanics of using the potty more than a year ago, has done so successfully on many occasions, and is now tall enough that she doesn’t even need the stepstool to reach the seat, she has made it clear that she sees no real reason to bother. I have reached the point of simply removing the diaper and letting her notice the consequences—the only way her predecessor was finally convinced at very nearly four years old—but unfortunately for me, those consequences are far more frustrating for me than for her. We’ll get there, but it’s hard to miss the irony when we still have to work pretty hard to get her to remember to use her manners at meals or snack time, but anytime someone asks if she needs to go to the potty, she chirps a ready, “No, thank you!”
My projects? Well, more of them were started than finished, as usual. And as usual, I have stayed up too late writing this. Mom, I promise I’ll add pictures soon. For now, my project had better be getting to bed so that I have a better chance of keeping up with them tomorrow.
Buzz (to Bookworm): Hey, I’m going to whisper something in your ear.
Bookworm: Finish chewing your broccoli first.
***********************
I’m not terribly surprised by the fact that I didn’t find time to write this weekend. I went to the gym on Saturday, cleaned house, and went to a concert with the Doc. Sunday is always a full day, and with church in the afternoon now it feels like it goes by even faster. But I wish I knew what happened to the two snow days!
Wouldn’t you know it would take until March to get our first real snowfall this season? Bookworm watches weather reports avidly, and is quick to flush an ice cube at the first sign there might be some wintry precip. She also does a mean snow dance. She used to wear her pajamas inside out—all of this was inspired by her bus driver, who was probably almost as eager for a snow day as the kids—but that must have been too irritating even for a chance at snow angels. Anyway, the weather wasn’t her doing this time. She was actually quite put out, as Monday was Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and was therefore to have been a “Reading Day,” when the kids were invited to wear comfy clothes, bring a stuffed animal and their favorite books, and have a carpet picnic while spending the day immersed in the printed word. This is Bookworm’s idea of a great day at school. Not even the promise of possible snow playtime really reconciled her to missing Reading Day until we also promised to have a picnic in the living room. So she spent a good part of the morning reading to her sisters, and lunchtime found us on a beach blanket, with sandwiches (egg and soy free), apple slices and popcorn. Since I had my hands full keeping them from knocking over drink glasses, we didn’t have any books at the picnic; instead, Bookworm suggested we could tell picnic stories. Hers was remarkably autobiographical, but with character names artfully borrowed from a book she was reading that morning. Of course, once she told one, everyone else had to have a turn too. Small wonder that we whiled away a fair amount of the remaining afternoon.
Somehow the rest of the time vanished among an assortment of other small projects. With four kids in the house we always have projects, and with four kids in the house we’ve learned it helps to keep them small. Spot’s was learning to scoot. With three older sisters in constant orbit, she’s always been pretty motivated to move, beginning with barrel rolls at about three months. Now she does some rocking an all fours, but not having yet quite figured out what to do with her legs, she generally resorts to a reverse army crawl across any open space until she hitches up against a sofa or family member.
Buzz’s project was changing clothes about three times an hour. I’ve heard friends complain about having kids with this impulse, but only recently has it really hit home. Buzz has always been my most fashion conscious—one of the aides at her preschool told me that the day isn’t complete until she gets a chance to see the outfit Buzz has come up with this time—but lately, after going through and trying on half the outfits she can reach (and depositing the unfit in a heap on the floor) she tends to end up wearing one of the same two or three things anyway. Since even at my best I’m not doing laundry every other day (though it can be close), this means that more often than not she is digging through the hamper to retrieve the red floral leggings she wore yesterday, her only concession being that she will wear a different shirt. Worse, she’s figured out that if she puts on something else in the morning, then changes right after lunch while I’m getting the baby ready to drive her to preschool, I don’t have the time to bully her into changing without the risk of missing the kiss-and-ride window. She knows that as long as it’s not her Tinker Bell nightgown, I’ll cave rather than have to park, get everybody out of their car seats, and march all three musketeers across the parking lot. One of Monday morning’s projects for me was swapping out some increasingly snug items from each of the girls’ drawers with others that had been too big last fall. Buzz, going to her dresser to answer a midday whim strike, found a shirt she’d never seen before (except on Bookworm two years ago, but who remembers that) and went into an ecstasy of gratitude for her new adornment. I was pleased that she said thanks without being prompted, but I knew I was in trouble when at dinner time she glowed aloud again and then exclaimed, “Mom, I want to wear this to school tomorrow and show all my friends and teachers my beautiful new shirt!” Undeterred by my pointing out that she’d worn it all afternoon and that it now had rice stuck to it, she brushed it off and promised to be more careful. With preschoolers like this, who needs teenagers?
Aslan, aside from shadowing Buzz anytime a change in wardrobe involved a fairy tale she felt like being involved in, also whittled away at my remaining energy and nerves by once more resisting any attempt to get her to use the toilet. While she mastered the mechanics of using the potty more than a year ago, has done so successfully on many occasions, and is now tall enough that she doesn’t even need the stepstool to reach the seat, she has made it clear that she sees no real reason to bother. I have reached the point of simply removing the diaper and letting her notice the consequences—the only way her predecessor was finally convinced at very nearly four years old—but unfortunately for me, those consequences are far more frustrating for me than for her. We’ll get there, but it’s hard to miss the irony when we still have to work pretty hard to get her to remember to use her manners at meals or snack time, but anytime someone asks if she needs to go to the potty, she chirps a ready, “No, thank you!”
My projects? Well, more of them were started than finished, as usual. And as usual, I have stayed up too late writing this. Mom, I promise I’ll add pictures soon. For now, my project had better be getting to bed so that I have a better chance of keeping up with them tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Is the Honeywood Over?
WARNING: This takes long-winded to a whole new level.
As the mother of four kids under the age of 9 and the instructor of a toddler fitness class, I spend a fair amount of time around children, and I have commiserated with many a friend over the struggle to get kids to eat well. My kids fit a lot of the eating stereotypes for their respective ages: they love pizza, pasta, white bread, and pretty much all sweets. But having seen some of the titanic battles waged by some of my friends even to get their kids to finish a bowl of Kraft mac n’ cheese, I have to admit that I’ve had it easy. My children, with a little encouragement and/or bribery, will generally eat vegetables. They love fruit, will eat wheat bread if it’s not too nutty or grainy, and are mostly willing to believe the argument that too much of certain things like fats and sweets really isn’t good for them. None of my kids has ever been below about 50% on the weight charts for their ages. So the worst I’ve had to deal with are the quirks like the fact that Bookworm will eat raw tomatoes like they are candy—I’ve seen her put away nearly an entire pint of grape tomatoes in a sitting—but often has to pick a piece of pizza apart into its component atoms to remove the chunks in the sauce. Or the fact that Aslan can hide two or three masticated baby carrots in her cheeks while putting off a decision to swallow until, having reached the point where she can no longer move her jaw, she instead regurgitates the whole mess back onto her plate. Worse, if downing the said carrots was a requirement to get dessert, she may even try to eat them again.
One of the most entertaining of my kids’ vegetable-related eccentricities is the fact that they all like lettuce, but don’t generally care for anything else in a salad (which in my opinion is what makes a salad, a salad). Even Bookworm, my only tomato ally in the family, prefers them on the side. She doesn’t even want dressing. But she will eat more than one plateful if it’s just plain lettuce, or in the words of her Grandma, “Honeymoon Salad”—lettuce alone. Bookworm, though, decided somewhere along the way that the name was really “Honeywood Salad,” and despite her father’s and my attempts to explain the play on words in the original name, she sticks to her version with a determination that would be envied by Olympic swimmers. When I suggested that she ask Grandma which was the right name, she adamantly refused, insisting “…you’re always telling me to ask people stupid questions.” So I gave up the argument, content that my daughter will at least fill up on salad while she waits for dessert.
Yesterday, however, a trip to the allergist changed radically the way our family will eat in the future. The visit was inspired by the fact that Aslan had thrown up a couple of times after eating peanut butter, which is a favorite staple of her older sisters. The first time was a year and a half ago, when she was about 18 months old, and our family pediatrician advised us to wait until she was three before trying again, as apparently sensitivity to peanuts is something many children outgrow. So we let her have one bite again last week, with the same result. This time, our regular doctor (a different one since the earlier advice) advised we have her tested by a specialist.
Given this lead-in, the fact that she turned out to be allergic to peanuts was hardly a surprise. I had already spent the week since the reaction to the peanut butter cookie we gave her reading the labels in our pantry and mentally noting which things would have to go. I also did a fair amount of online reading about food allergies, and peanuts in particular, and learned that peanut allergies can be some of the most severe and are also among the least likely to be outgrown. Buzz’s preschool has sent home a fair amount of literature on nut allergies, as enough children there have to carry Epipens that the whole school has been declared a nut-free zone. One such flyer included a story written by a mother pleading for understanding and support from teachers and other parents in protecting her 5-year-old from chance exposure to peanuts, as even accidentally rubbing her had against a peanut butter smear left on the cafeteria table and then touching her face could be enough to send her into an airway-constricting emergency. Or it might just make her hand itch…one could never be sure. I found the story fairly heart-wrenching, since like most Moms my worst fear is that something horrible will happen to one of my children when I’m not there to help or protect her. In my nightly prayers I almost always express my gratitude for my healthy children, and I have enough friends and family who have dealt with debilitating and/or life-threatening health issues that I don’t think I’ve really taken my own health or that of my loved ones for granted.
But my sympathy for this mother’s plea is now the empathy of personal experience. It is estimated that 12 million Americans have food allergies, perhaps 3 million of them school-aged children. These food allergies are the leading cause of anaphylaxis (until yesterday I’m not even sure I could have spelled that), which is a severe, life-threatening reaction. Ninety percent of these food allergies are caused by eight foods: peanuts, other tree nuts (pecans, almonds, walnuts, cashews, etc), eggs, soy, milk, wheat, fish and shellfish. Aslan, as it turns out, is allergic to the first four. The peanut allergy is so severe that almost 24 hours after the test when the rest of the positive results, including the pure histamine control spot, had all completely faded, the reddish wheal marking the spot where the doc poked her with peanut extract was still visible, like a counterfeit mosquito bite. As I said before, I had already resigned myself to the likelihood of a peanut allergy. To learn that she was now also to be denied other nuts (she loves almonds), eggs, and soy products came out of left field. I have been an avid reader of food labels for a long time, mostly in search of options lower in fat and sugar and higher in fiber. I had some idea already how many things either contain eggs or soy, or are manufactured on the same equipment as various nuts. Going home and just looking through our pantry reinforced this in a big way. Granted, she’s been eating many of these things without identifiable allergic reactions for years, but that doesn’t mean that the next time might not be the one that sends her to the emergency room. Peanut butter she has never really developed a taste for, so she won’t really miss it, but she adores eggs. Other favorites now on the prohibited list include Corn Flakes, most of our favorite sandwich breads, Ramen noodles, Annie’s White Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese, chicken noodle soup, most ice cream, and the entire spectrum of Girl Scout Cookies. We will be making no more family trips to Five Guys, a fabulous burger dive with a trademark open vat of shelled peanuts for patrons to munch on while they wait. Any time we do eat out, it will take significant advance homework.
So part of me is still reeling a little from what feels like a sucker punch. My adorable three-year-old, I feel like whining, is being deprived of the right of the very young to ask for a treat with a kid’s blissful ignorance of its nutritional value. Bad enough that she got landed with a birthday on Christmas Eve, making it unlikely during her school years that she will ever get a birthday party that isn’t at least a little overshadowed with Christmasness—now she can’t even have a regular birthday cake. When she starts getting invited to her friends’ parties, she won’t be able to eat theirs.
But a bigger part of me is simply reeling with gratitude, a little breathless at how lucky we’ve been. If my worst fear was a potential hurt that I couldn’t protect her from, I am now forewarned and can be forearmed. Reading the labels and learning some new recipes may be frustrating, but thanks to regulations designed to protect allergy sufferers, the information is there and I can find the things that are safe. In doing so, we will be rewarded not only with protecting her from potential harm, but with other likely benefits, like probably clearing up at least to a significant degree the annoying eczema that has plagued her on and off for the last two years. Her condition, with the necessary precautions taken, is not going to shorten her life expectancy or adversely affect her quality of life. It is quite possible, in fact, that she may outgrow at least some of these allergies. My nightly expressions of gratitude for my healthy daughter will now be all the more fervent.
And Aslan’s reaction to all this? I have joked that she is the first of my children to hit the Terrible Twos right on schedule, but I have been amazed at the poise she has shown throughout this process. When told before that she couldn’t have peanut butter, she simply accepted that and never begged for it, even when her sisters were allowed. Yesterday, I got to sit with her while a nurse jabbed her back about two dozen times with a needle, then held her hands for twenty minutes while several of those pinpricks turned into vicious itchy blotches. She did whimper a little—who wouldn’t?—but by the time it was half over she was already telling the doctor knock-knock jokes and introducing her stuffed animal (a lion, of course). When we explained the results and their implications to her, she didn’t whine or try to bargain. She simply seems to accept at face value our explanation that these things could make her sick. I’m sure there will be times when her limitations will feel more restrictive and she may resent them, but for now, she’s taking it famously.
Kinda makes me think back on the scriptural admonition that those who wish to be saved in the kingdom of God must become as little children. Aslan is learning discipline at a very young age. If all of us learned to truly avoid those things that could do us harm, how much better off would we be, physically and otherwise?
As the mother of four kids under the age of 9 and the instructor of a toddler fitness class, I spend a fair amount of time around children, and I have commiserated with many a friend over the struggle to get kids to eat well. My kids fit a lot of the eating stereotypes for their respective ages: they love pizza, pasta, white bread, and pretty much all sweets. But having seen some of the titanic battles waged by some of my friends even to get their kids to finish a bowl of Kraft mac n’ cheese, I have to admit that I’ve had it easy. My children, with a little encouragement and/or bribery, will generally eat vegetables. They love fruit, will eat wheat bread if it’s not too nutty or grainy, and are mostly willing to believe the argument that too much of certain things like fats and sweets really isn’t good for them. None of my kids has ever been below about 50% on the weight charts for their ages. So the worst I’ve had to deal with are the quirks like the fact that Bookworm will eat raw tomatoes like they are candy—I’ve seen her put away nearly an entire pint of grape tomatoes in a sitting—but often has to pick a piece of pizza apart into its component atoms to remove the chunks in the sauce. Or the fact that Aslan can hide two or three masticated baby carrots in her cheeks while putting off a decision to swallow until, having reached the point where she can no longer move her jaw, she instead regurgitates the whole mess back onto her plate. Worse, if downing the said carrots was a requirement to get dessert, she may even try to eat them again.
One of the most entertaining of my kids’ vegetable-related eccentricities is the fact that they all like lettuce, but don’t generally care for anything else in a salad (which in my opinion is what makes a salad, a salad). Even Bookworm, my only tomato ally in the family, prefers them on the side. She doesn’t even want dressing. But she will eat more than one plateful if it’s just plain lettuce, or in the words of her Grandma, “Honeymoon Salad”—lettuce alone. Bookworm, though, decided somewhere along the way that the name was really “Honeywood Salad,” and despite her father’s and my attempts to explain the play on words in the original name, she sticks to her version with a determination that would be envied by Olympic swimmers. When I suggested that she ask Grandma which was the right name, she adamantly refused, insisting “…you’re always telling me to ask people stupid questions.” So I gave up the argument, content that my daughter will at least fill up on salad while she waits for dessert.
Yesterday, however, a trip to the allergist changed radically the way our family will eat in the future. The visit was inspired by the fact that Aslan had thrown up a couple of times after eating peanut butter, which is a favorite staple of her older sisters. The first time was a year and a half ago, when she was about 18 months old, and our family pediatrician advised us to wait until she was three before trying again, as apparently sensitivity to peanuts is something many children outgrow. So we let her have one bite again last week, with the same result. This time, our regular doctor (a different one since the earlier advice) advised we have her tested by a specialist.
Given this lead-in, the fact that she turned out to be allergic to peanuts was hardly a surprise. I had already spent the week since the reaction to the peanut butter cookie we gave her reading the labels in our pantry and mentally noting which things would have to go. I also did a fair amount of online reading about food allergies, and peanuts in particular, and learned that peanut allergies can be some of the most severe and are also among the least likely to be outgrown. Buzz’s preschool has sent home a fair amount of literature on nut allergies, as enough children there have to carry Epipens that the whole school has been declared a nut-free zone. One such flyer included a story written by a mother pleading for understanding and support from teachers and other parents in protecting her 5-year-old from chance exposure to peanuts, as even accidentally rubbing her had against a peanut butter smear left on the cafeteria table and then touching her face could be enough to send her into an airway-constricting emergency. Or it might just make her hand itch…one could never be sure. I found the story fairly heart-wrenching, since like most Moms my worst fear is that something horrible will happen to one of my children when I’m not there to help or protect her. In my nightly prayers I almost always express my gratitude for my healthy children, and I have enough friends and family who have dealt with debilitating and/or life-threatening health issues that I don’t think I’ve really taken my own health or that of my loved ones for granted.
But my sympathy for this mother’s plea is now the empathy of personal experience. It is estimated that 12 million Americans have food allergies, perhaps 3 million of them school-aged children. These food allergies are the leading cause of anaphylaxis (until yesterday I’m not even sure I could have spelled that), which is a severe, life-threatening reaction. Ninety percent of these food allergies are caused by eight foods: peanuts, other tree nuts (pecans, almonds, walnuts, cashews, etc), eggs, soy, milk, wheat, fish and shellfish. Aslan, as it turns out, is allergic to the first four. The peanut allergy is so severe that almost 24 hours after the test when the rest of the positive results, including the pure histamine control spot, had all completely faded, the reddish wheal marking the spot where the doc poked her with peanut extract was still visible, like a counterfeit mosquito bite. As I said before, I had already resigned myself to the likelihood of a peanut allergy. To learn that she was now also to be denied other nuts (she loves almonds), eggs, and soy products came out of left field. I have been an avid reader of food labels for a long time, mostly in search of options lower in fat and sugar and higher in fiber. I had some idea already how many things either contain eggs or soy, or are manufactured on the same equipment as various nuts. Going home and just looking through our pantry reinforced this in a big way. Granted, she’s been eating many of these things without identifiable allergic reactions for years, but that doesn’t mean that the next time might not be the one that sends her to the emergency room. Peanut butter she has never really developed a taste for, so she won’t really miss it, but she adores eggs. Other favorites now on the prohibited list include Corn Flakes, most of our favorite sandwich breads, Ramen noodles, Annie’s White Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese, chicken noodle soup, most ice cream, and the entire spectrum of Girl Scout Cookies. We will be making no more family trips to Five Guys, a fabulous burger dive with a trademark open vat of shelled peanuts for patrons to munch on while they wait. Any time we do eat out, it will take significant advance homework.
So part of me is still reeling a little from what feels like a sucker punch. My adorable three-year-old, I feel like whining, is being deprived of the right of the very young to ask for a treat with a kid’s blissful ignorance of its nutritional value. Bad enough that she got landed with a birthday on Christmas Eve, making it unlikely during her school years that she will ever get a birthday party that isn’t at least a little overshadowed with Christmasness—now she can’t even have a regular birthday cake. When she starts getting invited to her friends’ parties, she won’t be able to eat theirs.
But a bigger part of me is simply reeling with gratitude, a little breathless at how lucky we’ve been. If my worst fear was a potential hurt that I couldn’t protect her from, I am now forewarned and can be forearmed. Reading the labels and learning some new recipes may be frustrating, but thanks to regulations designed to protect allergy sufferers, the information is there and I can find the things that are safe. In doing so, we will be rewarded not only with protecting her from potential harm, but with other likely benefits, like probably clearing up at least to a significant degree the annoying eczema that has plagued her on and off for the last two years. Her condition, with the necessary precautions taken, is not going to shorten her life expectancy or adversely affect her quality of life. It is quite possible, in fact, that she may outgrow at least some of these allergies. My nightly expressions of gratitude for my healthy daughter will now be all the more fervent.
And Aslan’s reaction to all this? I have joked that she is the first of my children to hit the Terrible Twos right on schedule, but I have been amazed at the poise she has shown throughout this process. When told before that she couldn’t have peanut butter, she simply accepted that and never begged for it, even when her sisters were allowed. Yesterday, I got to sit with her while a nurse jabbed her back about two dozen times with a needle, then held her hands for twenty minutes while several of those pinpricks turned into vicious itchy blotches. She did whimper a little—who wouldn’t?—but by the time it was half over she was already telling the doctor knock-knock jokes and introducing her stuffed animal (a lion, of course). When we explained the results and their implications to her, she didn’t whine or try to bargain. She simply seems to accept at face value our explanation that these things could make her sick. I’m sure there will be times when her limitations will feel more restrictive and she may resent them, but for now, she’s taking it famously.
Kinda makes me think back on the scriptural admonition that those who wish to be saved in the kingdom of God must become as little children. Aslan is learning discipline at a very young age. If all of us learned to truly avoid those things that could do us harm, how much better off would we be, physically and otherwise?
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