It's official...

What kid doesn't like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? And truthfully, what parent hasn't been saved by the pb and j? It's easy and a good source of protein. And now Jackson can join in on the greatness of peanut butter and any other nut for that matter! And he loves it, it was a bit messy, but he really enjoyed his first meals of peanut butter. He has been able to eat sunbutter which is oddly close in taste, so he hasn't had to miss much really.

Sometimes you feel like a nut...

And it's looking like when Jackson feels like one, he can have one. Jackson started his morning at the allergist's office doing a food challenge. The word is that he's tolerating nuts with no reactions! I'll find out more tonight when I can talk to both Jackson and Ron. But Ron has checked in and so far... so good! YAY!

The allergist...

Today we brought Jackson in for a follow-up appointment with the allergist. We were hoping for the good news that we could bring some nuts into the kid's diet, but not so fast! The results below don't mean much to the layman, however I wanted write them for recording purposes.

Summary: It's looking good for peanuts, however he did have a small reaction to tree nuts again. The newest one was shellfish, his reaction was STRONG. So to get a better idea of what these mean, they drew blood. We'll have the results in a week. For now, we'll keep him away from all nuts (including peanuts) and shellfish for sure.

There is a chance that we'll be able to try some nuts, but not just yet.

His results were:

Cat 0
Dog 0
Tree pollen 0
Timothy Grass 3/7
Ragweed 0
Alternaria (mold) 3/6
Aspergillus (mold) 3/8
Corn 0
Egg 0
Mil 0
Peanut 0
Soy 0
Wheat 0
Saline 0
Almond 0
Brazil 3/6
Cashew 3/5
Hazelnut 0
Pecan 0
Walnut 0
Cod 0
Shrip 6/30

Our week in photos...

Our shower wall collapsed...


We found dairy-free ice cream cones...


We made a bulletin board for Jackson's room. Jackson picked out the fabric and the ribbon all by himself...


We played Twister...


Our neighbor cut down a tree while the boys looked on...

Updates

I have loads of photos on the cameras that need to be downloaded, but I haven't gotten around to it. So this is just a quick update.

Jackson: Had a babysitter for the first time this last weekend. We attended a wedding celebration for a good friend of mine from work. We were only going to be away for a couple of hours and had been encouraged by a former teacher of Jackson's to have her over to watch him before she headed back to school in Ireland for Fall. This seemed like the perfect occasion to do so. Jackson had such a good time with Nicole that when we returned home he wanted us to leave again!

Jackson's allergies: We tried dairy with him on Saturday and he didn't seem to react so we tried a little more on Sunday. We are going to limit his exposure for a while and see what happens, but are encouraged to see that he may have grown out of this allergy... yay! It's still possible that he has grown out of the visible reaction, but could still end up bothering his ears. We'll see what time brings. We do know that he is allergic to caramel color and tree nuts and aren't willing to try peanuts with him until the doctor's recommendation of age four or older, same goes for shellfish.

Bathroom: Last Saturday night our bathroom shower wall posed a little problem. The wall behind the tile basically collapsed. So we've been without an upstairs bathroom while Ron fixes it. We've come up with a temporary solution for now. We know we want to remodel the bathroom in the coming year, just not now weeks before baby Addie is to arrive.

Baby Addie: Addie is giving a lot of false signs that she is ready to come out and meet everyone, and is frustrating her mother. I hope this is not a sign of her coming personality.

Dairy-free chocolate chip cookies...

Jackson was a helper in the kitchen this morning! We made dairy-free chocolate chip cookies together. I added all the liquid ingredients while Jackson added all of the dry. He kept an eye on the mixer and helped to put the cookie dough on to the baking sheets. This was the first time that he was truly a big helper in the kitchen and it was so much fun to work with my little guy. He is sure growing up quickly.

Dairy Free...

I have found that the Cub Foods in the next suburb over carries lots of organic and specialty products, which has made life a bit easier. Just before Jackson's birthday I found a cake mix by CherryBrook Kitchens that was allergen free. So I was able to make our little guy a chocolate cake that he could enjoy. I think he enjoyed helping me to make it and lick the spatula more so than eating the cake, but it sure made me happy.

We are glad that we found out about Jackson's allergies and can control the breakouts. He does really well with the diet and is a fan of most foods, so it hasn't been hard to give him a well-balanced diet. I wish that we could find some options at restaurants, but you just don't know what stuff is cooked with, and butter is a pretty common ingredient. On the brighter side, we've saved a lot of cash, by always eating at home.

A family update...

Jackson's Allergies: Many have asked what the final word was on Jackson's allergies, as I have not made it back to the blog often to update you. Jackson is allergic to all dairy, tree nuts, and things high in citric acid. He also reacts to rice bran extract and wheat germ, but not processed wheat. And he does not react to soy. The results on egg are still inconclusive, and need to be tried again. That's the skinny on food related allergies, but he does have some environmental allergies as well. He is reacting to detergents and dryer sheets with perfumes and dyes. We are able to elimintate all of these things at home, by using Tide Free and refraining from dryer sheets entirely, but in the world it's hard to avoid. He is continuing to break out at school, even given we are providing all wash cloths, bibs and blankets. Conclusion: it must be from rubbing on teachers' and friends' clothes.

Potty Training: Jackson is pretty consistent at going number two on the toilet and not in his diaper. If he doesn't go right away in the morning, we pay attention to the clues and he's usually pretty good about telling us he needs to go. As for going pee, on the other hand, he's taking it and leaving it. Some times he makes it a couple hours being dry, and other days, our timing must be completely off.

The Singer in the Family: And lately it isn't Ron. Jackson is singing up a storm. His lyrics are a bit modified, but he is always in tune. He's running around the house belting out Baa Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle, Twinkle, Jingle Bells, We wish you a Merry Christmas, 5 Little Monkeys, The Alligator and The Monkey Song (which he is teaching me), This Old Man, ABC's, Bob the Builder, Elmo's Song and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

Sara's World: Two more days and I will hopefully be done with my last final, if not, the class will end without me. :) But really, I have a couple of things left to do for the final and I will have made it through my first term at St. Scholastica. Classes will start up again for me January 5. In my other spare time, I'm working on Jackson's scrapbook and making birthday invitations, I enjoy working with paper. I am hating winter more than ever and trying to propose a move south... Ron has budged another .5 centimeter... so I may get him to make the plunge sometime in 2028!

Ron's Task's: Ron has been hard at work on a toy box in the shape of a van for Jackson's Christmas gift. My basement has been turned into a work shop with saw dust being tracked up daily... but the toy box will be worth it in the end. He's also keeping active playing on his co-ed volleyball team on Thursday nights... it seems to me though, that they aren't going to take the championship.

Allergy Update

The time at home has been going well, we are having a lot of fun when we can. Though we are starting to get a little stir crazy, and I welcome the adult conversations like you wouldn't believe. The schedule is a little nuts and goes something like this:

7:30 - 9 Try to get some work done
9 - 12 Take care of Jackson, pick up the house and run errands
12 - 2 Work
2-5:30 Keep Jackson busy
5:30 - 7:30 Eat and spend time with my family
7:30 - 10 Work or do homework, depending on the day

We are slowly finding out what Jackson is allergic to. On the no list so far are strawberries, tree nuts and caramel color (which could be dairy or gluten). We are trying gluten today, so we'll have the answer to this very soon.

We are also sure that he is allergic to our old detergent or dryer sheets. We've switched to Tide Free and stopped using dryer sheets and that has put an end to that reaction.

Strawberry Fields Forever

We've confirmed Jackson's first allergy, strawberries. We tried a small amount pureed in his cereal this morning and he seemed to get flushed right after breakfast. But seeing as how I am never quite sure that it's the food he's eaten, we tried it again at snack time. He had two small strawberries and within minutes his cheeks were bright red and splotchy. So strawberries move to the not safe foods, poor kid.

Safe Foods:
Alum
Apples
Aspagargus
Bananas
Banana juice
Black Beans
Blueberries
Brocolli
Carrots
Carrot Juice
Chicken
Chocolate Chip Cookies -- Enjoy life (allergen free)
Corn
Fruit leathers organic -- Peach, grape, pineapple, apricot
Fruit Snacks -- Annies organic fruit bunnies
Granola -- Back to Nature Apple Cinnmon
Grapes
Green beans
Gyro Meat
Hamburger
Lima Beans
Mango Juice
Mashed potatoes (made with rice milk, no butter)
Oats
Pears
Peas
Pickles
Pinto Beans
Pork
Potato
Raisins
Rice
Rice crackers -- Hol Grain Brown Rice
Rice flour
Rice Milk
Rice Poofs
Sorghum Flour
Spinach
Squash
Sweetpotato
Tapioca Flour

Not Safe
Strawberries

Rainy days and Mondays...

Allergy progress: On Friday we tried soy milk. A little bit for breakfast, a glass at lunch and one at dinner. It looked like he did fine, though he did have two tiny little red spots at bed time, but I don't think it was related. So, we tried the same thing on Saturday, and all went well. We'll put it on the maybe list (because of the two red spots) and take him back off for now.

Today is officially the start of our new schedule. I will be working a long day in the office on Mondays (while Ron is home with Jackson), staying home with Jackson the rest of the week, and working from home in the early mornings and evenings. It's a full schedule, and leaves basically no time to play, any free time will be used to do homework. I'm doing all of this to get a handle on Jackson's food allergies.

However, for the start of our "project", Jackson woke up with a rash all over his face! Ugh. And it looks as though Ron is going to have to go into work, because one of his lifeguards has injured himself. So we aren't really starting off on the foot I had hoped for, the right one.

It's possible that the lunch meat that we got could have been the culprit, though I have doubts. It's an organic product, contains chicken and sodium lactate (my research showed that this was not a potential allergy). The label also said that good practices were used to prevent any contamintation from other allergens. He ate the lunch meat at 5:30pm and at 8:30 when Ron put him to bed he was just fine.

Is it possible that something in his bed irritated him? I suppose so, so I took everything out and put it in the washing machine with Tide Free again this morning.

Or is it the fact that he has a cold of some sort and is pretty snotty? He potentially slept with snot all over his face during the night. Or maybe it has something to do with cutting his canine teeth.

We are going to do everything we can to get his face cleared up today so that we can try a new food tomorrow.

An allergy update...

After another weekend of getting the boy back to the basics, we were successful in clearing up all of his symptoms. Today we sent him off to school rash-free and are anticipating he will get into something there and come home with another reaction. However, it is promising to know that we only have to go through two more weeks of this.

In two weeks we will be pulling Jackson out of childcare and I will stay at home with him during the day. This way I can monitor his food intake and start to introduce potential allergens into his diet so we can see how he reacts and narrow down his food allergies. I have a feeling it's going to be a complicated process, but I am very excited that we are on our way to our final destination. The schedule will be temporary, and we hope to get him enrolled in childcare again after four weeks.

During this time, I will continue to work, just doing so from home on a flexible schedule. I hope to put in a couple hours in the morning, at nap time and in the evening. The real hard part is going to be finding time in there to get my school work done as well. For the next four weeks I am enrolled in one class at Century and two classes at St. Scholastica. After these four week I'll be down to one class at Century and one at St. Scholastica.

Here is what we know Jackson can eat without reaction (updated):
Oats
Rice
Apples
Pears
Chicken
Hamburger
Gyro Meat
Enjoy life Chocolate Chip Cookies (allergen free)
Rice Krispies
Black Beans
Pinto Beans
Rice noodles
Bananas
Annie's organic fruit bunnies
Peas
Aspagargus
Squash
Sweetpotato
Rice Milk
Potato
Back to Nature Apple Cinnmon granola
Hol Grain Brown Rice crackers
Lima Beans
Spinach
Mashed potatoes (made with rice milk, no butter)
Green beans
Brocolli
Mango juice
Pork
Raisins
Fruit leathers
Banana juice
Pickles

Another rough day, for me, not him...

This a picture of Thursday's reaction

Jackson broke out again pretty bad from something yesterday, but of course I don't know what, as he was at school all day. It seems the harder we try, the worse he gets. I know that we have the weekend to go back to the basics and hopefully get him clear. He itched a bit from this reaction, but for the most part, he didn't mind.

It was me that got frustated last night. The list of ingredients that contain allerens is endless, and hard to figure out: stabilizer, kamut, binder, starch, monosodium glutamate, guar gum, gum arabic, lecithin, cassein, albumin and that is just a tiny portion of the monster list!

But as usual, Jackson is making us smile. He is counting to 10 now, all by himself. Though he does occasionally forget about number nine.

A Jackson Update

Food allergies: We have taken a couple steps backwards, but we have found that Jackson reacts to anything with the ingredient "caramel color". So that's something we will read labels for, and hope he is cleared up by this weekend so we can try soy. It seems that a lot of foods contain either soy or dairy, so it would be great if we could add one or the other.

Coborn's Delievers: I was a big fan of SimonDelivers and was so sad to see it go out of business. Now Coborn's has bought Simon and we will see our first delivery tomorrow. Here's the best part: Coborn's has Fleishmanns light margarine which contains no soy or dairy!! I've been hunting all over town for this product. If all goes as planned, Jackson will be eating Rice Krispie bars this weekend, I'll keep you posted.

Halloween: I'm trying hard to find treats that will make-up for Jackson missing out on Halloween treats that all his friends will be eating! Maybe if he's eating a yummy Rice Krispie bar he won't be so likely to steal candy bars from friends (our kid is a thief for food). This year we have a couple Halloween events to attend, so we'll see if we can get Jackson to enjoy wearing his Halloween costume before the big night. This Friday we are heading to ZooBoo at Como Park, and next week is his Halloween party at school.

School Photos: It's picture day for Jackson today! Unfortunately the caramel color knowledge was not learned until it was too late, so we may have proof of Jackson's allergy in his school photo. We sent him off to school with his hair combed and a cute little sweater... we'll see what kind of shape he ended up in by the time the photographer came around.

Another week of the same...

After 8 days of Jackson being clear from his zero allergen diet, I was super excited to give soy a try this evening. I stopped on my way home for some dairy free margarine that still contained soy, so that I could make Rice Krispie treats for the boy, a reward I thought was well earned after 8 days of an extremely bland diet. But when I picked him up from childcare, he was all broken out. He had gotten a hold of a chunck of an apple cinnamon nutrigrain bar off the floor. I have to admit, I was quite bummed. Now we are back to square one, another week of the very limited diet before we can try soy. If he had gotten a hold of something with just one of the allergens we would have a better idea of what he is allergic to, but nutrigrain bars contain wheat, soy and dairy, so we still do not know the culprit.

The Results are In...

The bloodwork has come back for Jackson, which unfortunately doesn't tell us anything. I had a lengthy conversation with the doctor just now and she said it's very common for these food allergies not to show up in blood tests at this age and we just have to start with a trial and error process, being very careful to read labels so he is not exposed to something we are unaware of.

His blood was not tested for tree nuts though, so the blood will go back to the lab for additional testing.

We are to continue the strict diet minus the top allergens -- no wheat, soy, dairy, fish, shellfish, nuts, strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes and eggs -- for the next couple of days while he is at childcare. This weekend we can start with soy and watch him for 5-7 days to see if he has any reaction. We'll do this for a while, trying wheat and dairy last.

She advises not giving him nuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, or egg until he is at least three.

We also talked about his platelets levels being high (404). It's nothing to worry about at this time, but she will check his past platelet levels and see if there is anything to be concerned about.

Allergies Tested

This morning we took Jackson to an allergist. After many many days and weeks of hives from head to toe and rashes on his face, we made an appointment with a specialist.

It was obvious to the doctor that he was an "allergy kid" and she also thought that his snoring and cough were probably asthma related. While Jackson sat on my lap and ate a Nilla wafer, the nurse did a scratch test (picture) that unfortunately didn't come out with any definitive results (a small reaction to subjects 3 and 4). After already spending an hour and 45 minutes in the doctor's office it was decided that he would go in for a blood test to get some better results and to also check in on his immune system. Jackson was a real trooper and didn't complain with any of the pokes or pricks.

The doctor also found that his left ear was infected, which I had suspected. His ear was draining yellow/brown fluid over the weekend.

While he was a great little kid, all of this got him well off schedule and feeling a bit out of sorts. Which meant for a ROUGH afternoon. After FINALLY getting down for a nap after many tears, Jackson woke up thrashing in his crib from what we believe to be a nightmare. Loads of whimpering, whining and crying later, Ron and I were plum tuckered out!

We headed to Target to get all of his presciptions filled anyway. He'll be taking Singulair every day to help control the asthma, and he's on another antibiotic for the ear infection. We also have some Zyrtec for when the allergy symptoms start kicking in. At Target, we checked out hepa filters while waiting for the prescriptions to be filled. The doctor suggested a hepa filter run in his bedroom all the time to clear out any allergens, along with special pillow and mattress protectors (the filter she suggested costs $300!!). She suggested using a different detergent, but I already don't purchase anything with any dyes or perfumes, so I am not sure that a more expensive brand of the same thing will do any good, but we will discontinue use of dryer sheets in his laundry. It's all a bit overwhelming presently and we'll be digesting this over the week and deciding on how many of these precautions we'll be taking.

The blood tests will come back in a week, and we will have a follow up appointment wiht the allergist in 4-6 weeks. Whew! That's a load of information to share.

No More Berries!!

Second encounter, the culprit: Raspberries. Like the strawberry reaction we've had another and maybe even slightly worse (I'm pretty sure two of the spots were hives). I wish that we would have recognized this sooner, as each and every exposure to the fruits has the potential to make the allergy worse. So it is no strawberries, raspberries, or kiwi until Jackson is at least two when we will try again. I guess it's good we are now heading into a season without fresh berries, so the absence from our diet won't be so hard to manage.

A food allergy...

I'm beginning to think that Ron is right about Jackson having an allergy to strawberries. This is the result most recently: