No Whine Zone

I have declared my house a no whining zone.  I have reached the end of my sanity.  Bumblebee has gotten to a point that he will only talk in a whine and Lil' Bit is picking up his bad habits.  Trying to correct his behavior has met with little to no success. We have gotten to the point where something has to change.  I simply can't take it anymore.  I have reached a low.  My attitude has turned into that of a crazed maniac.  We all need to correct our behavior.  My kids can't improve themselves unless I do.  So, I have declared our house a NO WHINE ZONE.

Now this is not for the faint of heart.  It takes some serious discipline.  Not discipline over the kids, but over myself.  For this to work, my outlook, and attitude has to change first.  That means when when I've acknowledged Bumblebee pointing out something that is out of place 100 times, even if I -can't fix it, I must acknowledge it 100 more with patience.  When C-note it repeating a phrase over and over, I must do my best to calm the stimming while being calm myself.  And, when Lil' Bit has somehow found yet another unsupervised crayon/sharpie/pen and decorated my walls/furniture/floors that I don't yell, I simply help her clean it up....again.

Kids learn by example.  If I'm acting like a lunatic, they will too.  Though Bumblebee trying to firmly plant a transformer toy in another boy's head last night was NOT learned from me.

As you can see, this is going to require will of iron and control over myself.  The rest 'should' fall into place.  This change will not happen overnight, but it will change.  I'm in the trenches, my nerves are constantly under attack.  There will be bad days, everyone has them, but it is my hope, that those days become fewer all the time.

Food Allergies

We have a lot of food allergies in my house.  My biggest one is seafood.  Lil' Bit however, is allergic to wheat (NOT gluten), eggs, casein and whey.  As I've mentioned before, her reactions happen in the digestive system.  She will get lower back pain and every other symptom of a urinary tract infection.  Since she still wears a pullup while sleeping, she also gets small sores all over her behind.

When she was first diagnosed, our pediatrician recommended only pulling out all dairy, and checking labels for casein and whey.  That also means not just cow milk, but ANY milk from an animal.  We were also told to avoid coconut milk, as that has proteins that can mimic cow protein.  Luckily, Lil' Bit is a fabulous eater and only missed her cheese and yogurt.

We went on this way for several months.  Her symptoms almost went away, but not completely.  She hardly ever has eggs, so we knew that wheat was causing more trouble.  This was going to be tough.  We eat a LOT of wheat here.  Yes, we had limited hers, but now, what to do....

I am not a good cook. In fact, I despise cooking.  But, now I really don't have a choice.  Go to your grocery store, read some ingredient lists, things may be gluten and wheat free but rarely are they gluten, dairy AND egg free.  That is a very tall order!  You can even look at a package of taco seasoning and find whey, it's commonly used as a thickener.

Upcoming, I will be posting new recipes that will satisfy a wide variety of palettes while remaining as allergy free as possible.  It's is truly insane the differences in tastes in my house.  Recipes will include spice blends, mild main dishes that can be spruced up at the table per individual and allergy free items.  As I said, I hate cooking, so these will all be simple, yet tasty.