Fall 2013

Recently we were all almost swept away by some nasty storms that produced devastating tornadoes.  We had an underground storm shelter installed beneath our garage this past summer...  A tornado touched down 1 mile from our house.  Thankfully that one hit a field, but a half mile in any direction and it would have hit a subdivision of homes.  It was pretty frightening... we were diligently watching the weather online and also listening to a weather radio.  We had my sister and her kids over because my brother-in-law was on shift at the firehouse.  They called for Westfield to seek immediate shelter and our sirens were going off for at least an hour.  AFTER they lifted the watch for our area, we all got out, looked at the sky, and saw a wall of twirly VERY LOW black clouds quickly headed right for us.  We RAN back to the garage and filed down again... that's when it hit hard, and that's when the tornado hit down the road from us.  We had 3 adults and 4 children down there, and it was cozy, but there was enough room for more. We had the weather radio right outside the door to the shelter so we could follow it, and also ran an extension cord down to the shelter so we could bring down a portable DVD player (THANK YOU UNCLE DUSTY AND AUNTIE CHRYSTAL!!!).  The kids were remarkably well-behaved almost the entire time.  We let them watch Charlotte's Web (which Asher now LOVES), and we showed them pictures from our phones and they sat well for a long time.  Crazy weather in the midwest!  We now reside in "tornado alley" so I keep telling Ross the storms we get here are NOT like what we experienced in Chicagoland, and not like what he experienced in WI growing up.

We are gearing up for the holidays and it's so fun this year, because although Asher doesn't quite get what holidays are yet, he gets excited for them and loves saying "HAPPY THANKSGIVING" or "MERRY CHRISTMAS"... He LOVED Halloween and was excited to dress up, and also loved saying "trick or treat".  He can't eat any candy, but since he's never had it, he has no idea yet what he's missing and didn't care a bit that we gave all of it to his cousins.  He just liked walking around in his costume and talking to the people that answered the doors  ;)  He's not shy AT ALL!

Ross is doing well and keeping very busy with work, and I'm of course keeping very busy chasing a two year-old and teaching him everything he needs to know to survive and thrive in the world  ;)  No big deal.  We recently decided to do a grass-fed dairy trial because one of my friends that has a corn intolerance told me that she can have grass-fed dairy and not be affected at all, saying that the corn-fed dairy is what makes her sick.  The yogurt she suggested is from an organic, grass-fed farm/creamery that is in Zionsville, IN, which is like one town over from us!  How cool is that?!  It doesn't get any more local than that.  I was excited to try, hoping desperately that maybe the grass-fed option might make a difference.  In the beginning, it seemed to.  We started with yogurt and for the first day or two we saw no change in him in any way.  He did 7 days total on the yogurt and 1 day with some whole milk (organic grass-fed) mixed in his soy milk, but by then it was obvious it was causing him distress... Although, it was nothing near the level of insane hell that we went through with him during infancy.  After about 48 hours or less, he became very very fussy, having tantrums and fits for EVERY SINGLE THING, allllllllllllllllllllllllllll day long.  He also started waking VERY early, and not napping well at all.  Then he started having a very hard time falling asleep at night, staying up way later than normal in the crib trying to go to sleep... then still waking incredibly early... then still not napping well... which then also compounded his insane tantrums and constant SCREAMING.  The ridiculous fussiness got worse and worse, and it was apparent to me that it was the dairy.  He reacts this way with corn products or derivatives of any kind.  I told Ross I wanted to stop the yogurt and he didn't, so we decided we'd get some of the grass-fed whole milk and start mixing it in with his milk.  That took only one sippy cup of 1/4 cow's milk to determine it was really bothering him.  He became very pale (even more so than usual), had terribly dark circles under his eyes, and became horribly bloated, on top of the not sleeping and insane fussiness.  All glaring signs of food intolerance.  We stopped.  Poor buddy.  We were hoping to be able to incorporate some grass-fed dairy just to get more fat into his diet, but he's not ready.  With a food intolerance, kids can grow out of it at any time, and the real difference is how it affects their body.  A true allergy triggers an allergic response and possible anaphylaxis.  A food intolerance is very hard to pinpoint, and almost impossible to test for aside from a food trial.  Blood tests and allergy tests will not register intolerances.  It is said that an intolerance won't "kill" you (an allergy can), but an intolerance can make you very dangerously sick if it's ongoing.  People that have food intolerances aren't able to properly digest that food, and also often cannot retain any of the nutrients that they are ingesting due to the body rejecting the food in question.  This often causes people with food intolerances to become malnourished or deficient in specific nutrients, become sick easily, etc.  All that to say, Asher is obviously still intolerant of dairy and corn.  For now, we keep on keeping on... We will do a dairy trial again down the road, maybe in 6 months or a year.  He may have outgrown it by then, or he may have this his entire childhood.  Only time will tell.  If you want to get a tiny tiny glimpse of what we are dealing with in this, for one week (or even just one day), look at EVERYTHING that you eat.  See if there is dairy (in any form) in it, or if there is corn (of any kind) in it.  It's not just straight corn, or corn flour or corn meal or corn oil that bother him.  The derivatives like corn syrup or maltodextrin or dextrose or any imitation sweetener, those bother him just as much, if not more.  It's HARD, but we're used to it, and it's our life!

p.s. I'm going to post pictures and videos in separate posts to follow by month... there are MANY MANY photos to catch up on, so here's a disclaimer to skip those posts if you aren't a fan.  We have some friends and family reading this blog who aren't on Facebook and whom we haven't seen in a very very long time.  This is the only way they see anything about him, so the overflow of documenting his life is for them (shout out to my great Aunt Marge!) :)  Thanks for reading!  Thanks for caring  ;)