Pictures, Henry, Etc.

I have about a gazillion pictures and even some videos of the kids being insanely cute, at the playground, in the car, at grandma’s, and even at home. I really need to pack up a bunch for the California grandparents and post some. Seriously, I could post a couple “ohmygodsocute” pictures a day and go weeks before I’m stretching or going back that far to get good ones.

I keep starting posts and not finishing them, to the point where I am tempted to write snippets on the fly, no longer than what you see to this point, and just do them when they come to mind and I have time.

Henry waves and says “bye bye” now and it’s the cutest thing. He also progressed almost instantly from walking to running and even climbing. With a bit of support from me, he climbed up a large slide yesterday. See pictures, if I get them posted.

We’re a bit mystified by the whole allergy thing, specifically with regard to dairy, as it seems to be more about contact than ingesting it. The slightest trace of dairy, and apparently certain other things, makes his skin break out. However, he has eaten tiny amounts of dairy in dry foods and not been affected. My grandmother gave him a lemon cookie and I decided to let it go, then read the ingredients and sure enough, milk. Which was also in the oatmeal raisin cookies the girls had. So next time he was there, two days later, he ate two of them. Most flavored potato chips have milk. Who knew? He recently tried one Utz salt & pepper chip and loved it. The test was reaction to the black pepper, which in that amount he didn’t, which was the expected result. Turns out they have buttermilk, yet don’t conform with standard allergen labeling so I’d missed that before.

He can apparently eat eggs.

And mayonaise, but one of the times he had mayo, it inflamed his skin where it got on his belly and chest, or it did in combo with something else, anyway. He was eating a particularly safe meal. He loved potato salad, and it didn’t affect him.

He can eat fresh tomatoes. Thinks they are wonderful. That should be nothing more than the concern one might have for a food moderate to low in salicylates (looking, it’s apparently in the same class as carrots, cauliflower (which he’s had but is meh about), parsnip (ditto), onion, sweet potato (which either bothers him if there is enough or is a red herring or mixed in with the contact problem substances), some squash, etc. Anyway, he is not allergic to them. Yay!

Any non-spiced meat should be fine, and he had a taste of Kahn’s beef hot dogs recently, no problem. No milk in those, which would be the other hot dog concern.

He has had two extremely small tastes incorporating cooked blueberry, no apparent problem.

He has had canned pineapple in heavy syrup, no apparent problem. Small amounts. Not a surprise, as he did OK with even smaller amounts of dried pineapple.

I forget what else he’s had that might be new. Well, besides his birthday cake! Wal-Mart’s brand white cake mix has no milk. Ditto for Wal-Mart’s brand of chocolate fudge frosting (as opposed to milk chocolate), which I ended up using only for accent. The rest got eaten on spoons over the course of a few days, including by Henry, who traditionally doesn’t get sweets because so many are off-limits or uncertain yet. I made homemade lime frosting using powdered sugar, shortening, water, lime juice (a tablespoon or so squeezed from half a lime), and so grated lime skin. The cake was unusually good. The fudge frosting was exceptionally good for canned, to the point of being good as frosting goes, and the lime I made was one of the best frostings I have ever had. It was awesome, and now we know that with the right mix or recipe, cake will be something he can indeed have.

Anything I’ve forgotten will have to wait. I’ve taken hours to write all this, off and on, and that about covers or more what I’d intended.