Things here have continued to increase in their craziness....apparently that is possible, yes. I wouldn't have believed you if you had said that to me a year ago, yet here we are.
The same always helps to maintain the calmness...
Our little dog with a huge personality is making her feelings known increasingly and is still running to our youngest when she has a meltdown, which is amazing.
Besides that our animals seem to be all confused. Our ginger cat regularly sits in with our rabbit (sadly we had the death of a rabbit to deal with too), our rabbit plays with our dog and also growls at her when he has had enough- it really is something to watch them all together...
Our eldest and youngest both had a lot of tummy aches and other symptoms, such as mouth ulcers, rashes and generally feeling bad that led me to doing allergy and intolerance testing for them both. It turns out that they both cannot have corn due to intolerances. I thought this would be simple enough- WRONG!! Corn is in EVERYTHING. It is so hard. Just so you know I am not just blowing this into something it isn't....
Family member 1: Allergy to dairy. Intolerant to corn and derivatives, cashew nuts, gluten, celery and more.
Family member 2: Allergy to egg. Intolerant to gluten. Intolerant but no symptoms as yet to dairy. Intolerant to cooked tomatoes.
Family member 3: Allergy to dairy products. Intolerant to gluten, corn and derivatives, peanuts and more.
Family member 4: Allergy to soya, dairy products, egg. Intolerant to gluten, yeast and more.
Family member 5: no intolerances or allergies but lives with us so has to eat all the weird food we do.
Add to this us all having hayfever, one with asthma, two with excema and it is crazy. Eating out cannot happen except for a very small choice at McDonalds, and then only at ones we can trust (not ideal).
Shopping for food is a nightmare as I have to read ALL ingredients on EVERYTHING. I cannot buy meat in the shop, it has to be from a butcher who butchers their own meat. Any processed food is a no-no. This means a lot of home cooking, most of which is a disaster because all recipes need to be altered for our diets. Plus, add on top of that the fact the children's autism and sensory processing difficulties and I wonder how they actually eat anything at all.
We are back in the loop of potato products (very few are ok but thankfully I have found a handful that work) with peas and carrots, crisps, biscuits and cereal. Of course, each of these has to be the specific brand in the specific box/bag. Our trusted cereal changed their packaging recently to advertise the new Jurassic Park film, so now our youngest can't eat those anymore :(
The rate at which we are going through Bob's Red Mill 1 for 1 flour is noones business. I am in a bit of a panic internally at the moment actually with a birthday this week coming, and the inevitable pressure of having to make a cake without all of the above ingredients. Plus, icing- this contains corn flour so is a no-no. I have learned to make my own but it is time consuming and a pain in the proverbial. I am still experimenting with cake recipes too and they might work one day but not the next- like all gluten free cooking it seems. I have discovered they like a particular brand of marzipan though- bonus!
Besides the food issues, we have been trying to keep as busy as we can, allowing for down time inbetween busy times. It seems to be working on the whole, but the days out we have been doing are very child centred. I still know that if I tried to persuade them into anything else they hadn't picked then we would be met with resistance leading to issues.
We have managed a canal tour though, something I have wanted to do since moving here, but ssshhhh....don't tell them it was my idea ;)
We have had a nice break from professionals too so things have calmed down around appointments until next week. Oh, and our eldest has started to feel able to go out a bit more and even talk to other people. Yesterday he even went on a day trip with people he hadn't met before (to a place he knows very well and with a phone to contact me if needed) and had an awesome day. We even just caught him outside playing with the boy from next door over the fence :)
Our eldest daughter has been struggling more, but she always does over these months, and we keep having to get her through, which is what we are doing currently.
Our youngest is still the whirlwind she always has been.
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