Alysa had her follow-up sleep study back in May the night before Memorial Day. It literally came up quickly as in 2 days notice. I called Friday to schedule it for June and was told they had an opening that Sunday. So I took it. Two weeks ago, I talked to the sleep doctor and was thrilled to hear that her sleep apnea is GONE! She stopped breathing a max of 1 time per hour, which he said is borderline normal and her oxygen saturation level never dropped below 98% (last time it dropped to 84%!!!). He's THRILLED that she is eating so well and off Prevacid. He was actually surprised at how well she's doing.

This morning actually, she woke up at 8:45 and was BEGGING to eat b/c she was SO hungry. Music to my ears. :) She devoured 2 pieces of sausage, 3/4 of an egg and a whole banana. I had to give her the sausage before the egg was done because she was begging for food. She has never done that before. Dinners are still her worse meal, but she's slowly picking up some new foods. Ham is currently her "favorite", well immediately after chips and dip. :)

Here are some pics of her at the sleep study.

I have been MIA this past week from traveling and just the chaos of life. Last week we took the girls to their favorite amusement park and then I was in Rhode Island for my cousin's high school graduation for a long weekend. It was a great time and my Aunt was wonderful and made everything (including her party) dairy free, so not only could Kayla come but I could relax.

I will work on getting a better update and pictures up in the next few days. But in the mean time, Kayla was thrilled to come home to her flowers in bloom!

I will say there is truly a month for everything! Thank you to Janeen for not only adding me to the list of dairy-free blogs, but for letting me know about this every important month of Dairy Alternative Month.

Kate DeBevois from the Philadelphia Wellness Examiner wrote an article about it and included links to some milk free sites. Some on her list are new to me, so I’m excited to check them out.

I’ll take a page out of Janeen’s book and post some more of my favorite milk-free websites.

Sarah
Amy
Go Dairy Free (yes, even though I know she is listed in the article – I love her site and book)
Milk Allergy Companion
Chocolate Emporium
Amanda’s Own
Cherry Brook Kitchens
Enjoy Life Foods
Divvies
Tofutti - I can still have my chips and dip!!!
Silk - yogurts and “milk”

We’re “lucky” in that dairy, although it’s can be very hard to shop dairy-free (many many bizarre and “regular” things contain dairy), it is one of the easiest if not the easiest food to substitute for. Many of you who have been to my house know that I can serve foods that would fool anyone into believing it was made with dairy and not without. So I will now go and enjoy the rest of Dairy Alternative Month even if I do still miss cheese every day of my life.

I get a lot of people who don’t quite understand why I try to keep Kayla away from certain situations. The prefect example is ice cream. Her school this year is having ice cream at their annual end of year picnic. Last year they tried Rita’s. This year, because, from what I am told, other parents complained that their precious kids were denied Mr. Softee (give me a break!), they went back to ice cream. Although I still am furious in many ways, I did not make a huge fuss over it. The main reason being is I know I have it good there. The bottom line is they keep Kayla safe and they make her feel safe. And they do this while including her in everything. The director did, after talking to me, offer to have all the kids eating popsicles to sit at a separate table. But I will still bring Kayla her own safe popsicle. I have thus far tried unsuccessfully to obtain the ingredients for Mr. Softee’s popsicles and giving her something that sits amongst ice cream is a bit beyond my comfort level.

Before I get too far off track, I know some, probably the director included does not quite understand why I am so concerned about the ice cream factor. The bottom line is ice cream is messy – ESPECIALLY when being eaten by a bunch of preschoolers, outside on a hot June day. And now I have a perfect example as to what risk being around ice cream poses for Kayla.

Saturday, J’s work had their annual open house (pictures to follow later). His boss does it up with a petting zoo (with goats, bunnies, hedge hogs, birds, chickens, etc); baby chicks to hold; face painting and pony rides. The girls were super excited about going and had a blast. This year, for the first (and thankfully last time – it was apparently very expensive), his boss had the ice cream man come. Before we left to go home, Alysa very much wanted her face painted. So we waited on line – for well over a half hour. Surprisingly she was patient and waited and actually got her face painted. After, I was doing something for Kayla while Alysa meandered around in circles by me with her blue butterfly face. The next thing I know she came up to me showing me her hand. She had a blue streak across it. My first thought was she wiped her face and had paint on her hand. Bust as I was wiping her hand off with only a tissue, I looked up and there standing next to Alysa was a boy holding some blue ice creamish pop in his hand. It then hit me that it wasn’t face paint on her hand, but ice cream dripped from his pop. Thankfully I noticed this and I was able to wash her off with wipes. But had that been Kayla, we most likely would have had a reaction, or a strong possibility of one.

The drippage factor of ice cream is the EXACT reason it puts me into a tailspin. Thankfully her schools ice cream eating will be done at tables and as contained as it can be (with hand washing afterwards). But it still is not something I consider fun. I’m dreading the picnic and can not wait for it to be over.

...telling ghost stories.

Kayla – “Once upon a time I was in bed and Alysa was outside. Alysa called me outside and we found a huge beatle. We were holding the beatle and we heard ‘Oooooooh Ooooooh”. We turned around a ghost was there. He took the beatle from us and ate him all up. Then he tried to kill us and we took him and threw him away. We threw him all the way to Mars. Mommy, where is the ghost now?”

Me – “I am guessing he is still on Mars where you threw him.”