For something like 3.5 months, John-Thomas has not been allowed to have anything with milk-products in it. He's had some tummy troubles for years and that was the latest suggestion from the doctor after they stuck probes up his nose and down into his intestines.
It looks initially like it might have done some good. While he was in Utah, JT's gagging decreased. When they got home, it was only a once-a-week kind of thing, so it looked like this was a big part of the solution. By now, though, he's back to where he started and showing no improvement whatsoever.
We drove out to Denton to see the doc again, and he confirms it sounds like milk is not the solution. He now informs us that there were not only a lot of white blood cells in his intestines, but also a lot of histamines, so it's definitely allergy related and probably dietary but it might be environmental too. The thing is, the allergy testing he did came up with mostly negative results or minor results, 0+ or so. The only thing that is a 2 he doesn't eat regularly and he has nothing that came in at a 3-6, which is normally when a body gets noticeably bothered by something.
We know JT has environmental allergies - we do and he and Superstar both react to the allergens around here at the same time we do. So the next step is to take him to our allergist and get him properly tested for food and environmental allergies and go from there.
As we were driving to the doctor, JT calmly asked, "Is life supposed to be hard?"
Joy's inspired answer was Yes, but it's also supposed to be joyful.
To celebrate the return of milk and a couple other milestones in his young life, we took him to get a milkshake.
What have we learned from our grand 3.5 month experiment? We could totally live off soy milk (for cooking and baking) and almond milk (chocolate flavor for drinking) in an emergency. It keeps for a year and is a lot yummier than powdered, so I'm thinking this will become a fixture in our food storage.
While I'm talking about food, I'll mention that Joy started the Naturally Slim program I went through 2 years ago. We liked it when I was doing it; we like it again as Joy goes through. So we're going to be implementing some of the elements of it at home on a regular basis, trying to teach the kids to take small bites (as Princess always has), to pause between bites (the way JT does), and to be more aware of when they're full (Superstar can even say no to cake when he's full). After eating 10 minutes, pause for 5; oh, and no sweets after today until Halloween, and from then on
we'll be more purposeful with our sweets.
Our father just Brrrr! It's cold 'cause our dad said brrr.
