Tiny Texas

Nathan pulled out his brand-new baby sized waffle iron this morning and made some tiny Texas shaped waffles. I think this is the first time I’ve ever associated the great state of Texas with something small. 😂 Having crispy little lone-star state waffles definitely made Nathan happy! And it reminded me that my college students do actually cook stuff. They don’t just subsist on cold cereal and peanut butter like so many others do. That makes me feel like I did a decent job preparing them to live on their own! And that I chose wisely when doing my Christmas shopping. 😉

It Was Slow Going

We are a waffle eating family. With Matthew’s need to eat waffles made with eggs on a regular basis, they have become a weekend staple. Waffles are not as versatile as pancakes when it comes to fun food, but on occasion I have found a creative way to make waffles fit whatever theme I’m working on. Over the past few years, I’ve had my eyes on some cute, themed waffle irons, the mini ones that are all the rage of late. Earlier this fall I happened upon a box set of two Halloween themed irons and decided it was time to give them a try. 

This morning we ate pumpkin waffles shaped like pumpkins and apple butter waffles in the shape of tiny skulls. With the ever-appropriate black cinnamon syrup as accompaniment, they were tasty little bites of Halloween themed fun. Having said that, it obviously took a lot longer to cook enough to feed five of us. Waffles are usually pretty quick around here because we have two family sized waffles irons, but the two itty bitties simply aren’t able to crank out waffles in as large a quantity as the bigger appliances. But they were definitely fun! In future, I would probably make the waffles earlier and keep them warm in the oven, maybe even make them in advance and reheat them in the oven. That way breakfast won’t still be cooking at lunch time. 😜

Festive Food-Part II

With waffles on the menu at least weekly around here, they have begun to creep their way into our fun food repertoire. The only wrinkle is that most of the ideas I see online use round waffle irons and ours is square. But with a few adjustments, I can usually find a way to make things work out. Thus was the story with this morning’s Belgian reindeer. The first ones were a bit disproportionate, but they improved in the second generation. And even the weird looking ones tasted good, so I consider that a success. 😉

Playing With Our Food

For Christmas my mother-in-law planned to give me a waffle iron that makes Lego brick shaped waffles. However, like everything else right now, it was back ordered. She ordered it in what should have been plenty of time, expecting it to ship in November, and when it didn’t arrive before the holiday, she gave me a picture and said she hoped it would arrive…eventually. Eventually was just about right because she actually put the iron in my hands on Easter.

Anyone who knows us knows that we have a little bit of a Lego addiction around here. It started with Kevin’s love of Legos as a kid, continued with the Lego cake topper on our wedding cake, and was perpetuated with all of our offspring. I don’t think we have had a Lego-less Christmas since Daniel was a wee baby. From Duplo to Technic to Power Functions to Ideas, we have it all. And it has been well used and well loved. There were literally years and years when the Legos came out every single day. So anything Lego themed is right up our alley. Matthew’s ability to eat waffles with eggs and our going on three years of traditional Sunday morning waffle breakfasts made the waffle part just right as well. Honestly, it was one of those perfect gifts.

The hard part came trying to choose a time to create the Lego waffles. Not only did everyone need to be here, but we definitely needed to factor in enough time to play with our food. Because what good are Lego waffles if you don’t build with them prior to consuming them? Between Daniel and Nathan both juggling work schedules and social engagements, Malia’s horseback riding lessons, Matthew’s increasing social commitments, and the return of our church activities and meetings, it was pretty difficult to find a time when I had time to make some fun waffles and everyone was on hand to create some eatable art. As the summer drew close to its conclusion, I got very serious and sat everyone down with their calendars so we could find a time to eat waffles all together on a day when we didn’t need to rush to get to church on time. We finally decided that this evening’s dinner would be the prime opportunity. We actually put it on the calendar so no one would schedule anything on top of it.

We have two big family sized standard waffle irons so that I can cook enough waffles to feed everyone in a decent amount of time, but with only one Lego iron I knew I needed to allow more time for cooking. I took me about four times longer to make the waffles than it did for my crew of starving youngsters to eat them, but it was well worth it. I’ve spent the past twenty years trying to teach my kids not to play with their food, but today was the exception. And what fun we had!

 

Christmas Cuisine-Part II

A perfectly acceptable reason for eating sprinkles for breakfast.

This is what the boys miss out on because they have to go to school. 😁

So...

It looks like the milk waffles are not a resounding success. Matthew has eaten a small waffle (about 3” square) every day this past week with no obvious problems. This morning we ate milk waffles for breakfast. Matthew had a full serving after which he had the same “not feeling right” reaction that he had last Saturday. He described it as feeling like he had a golf ball in his throat. Like last week, it passed in about 15 minutes, but to me it says that his body is not ready to tolerate that much milk.

I don’t see this as a failure. I see it as proof that he is less allergic than he once was. I also see it as a valuable bit of info gained. Matthew is disappointed that the milk waffles have not gone as smoothly as the egg waffles. He really wants it to work. But he’s also smart enough to know that not now doesn’t mean not ever. So now I call the doctor and figure out our next step. Based on the info she gave us at Matthew’s last appointment, I suspect it will be continuing to explore eggs, with cookies being next on the list. But we’ll see. The doc is the expert and she may have different ideas.

Take a Big Breath…

Today was the day Matthew switched from waffles with eggs to waffles with milk. Although the initial waffle with egg day was stressful for me, today was much more so. You see, when he was a baby, his reactions to milk were always much more severe than his reactions to eggs. In fact, the only reason I suspected he had an allergy to eggs was the fact that if anything containing egg went into his mouth, he immediately spit it back out. There was none of the raspy breathing, immediate mucus increase, vomiting, hives and accompanying mama panic that occurred when he came in contact with milk. Add to that the fact that percentage wise, there is a lot more milk than eggs in waffles, and I’ve pretty much been a big mother sized stress ball for the past couple of days.

We had a little hiccup this morning when, about ten minutes after his first tiny bite, he declared in a panic that his throat didn’t feel right. He said it felt a little tight, like there were too many people crammed into one room. That put me into a bit of a controlled panic as well. I say controlled because I was pretty much freaking out on the inside but trying to keep my calm but concerned mom face on the outside. Kevin, Matthew and I talked through everything, reassuring Matthew that if things didn’t go as smoothly as the egg waffles, everything would still be fine. Since there was no increase in severity over those next few minutes, we all opted to hold off on the Benadryl and see what happened with a bit more time. After another fifteen minutes or so, Matthew told us that the weirdness had passed, and everything felt normal. With a bit more discussion, he decided he wanted to give the milk waffles another try, so he took one more tiny bite and we waited.

There were no more things that felt wrong, so we kept going, one bite at a time with longer periods of waiting and smaller increases in serving sizes to play it safe. He made his way up to one full sized waffle by lunchtime with no more ill effects. So here’s the thing. He didn’t take any antihistamines last night so any reactions today would not be masked by Zyrtec. His seasonal allergies were so bad when he woke up this morning that the throat weirdness could have been caused by any number of other things. We just don’t know for sure. But in all honesty, I’m still feeling extremely cautious about the whole thing. With Labor Day being on Monday, we have two more days when he can eat milk waffles for breakfast and then be with Kevin or I all day. And all of next week he is planning to eat a waffle for a snack after school rather than eating them for breakfast and then heading off for an entire day away from the parental eagle eye.

At this point, I’m saying today was a cautious success, one that can turn into a full success with more time and more waffles. And I’m enormously impressed with the courage Matthew is showing with this process. He knows that he can stop at any time, but he wants things to go well so much that he didn’t let this morning’s initial scare deter him.

As for me, I just need to remember to keep breathing…

Learning Curve

I keep finding myself wanting to tell Matthew to wash his hands after he touches egg waffles to prevent cross contamination and to keep everything else safe for...Matthew. It is clearly going to take me awhile to wrap my brain around this whole “eggs are ok” thing.

L’Eggo My (Better Than) Eggo!

After our big coupe at the allergist’s office on Tuesday, the hot topic of conversation became when to have Matthew try egg waffles. Kevin and I both felt like sooner would be better, but we’ve always included Matthew in the decision-making process where his foods are concerned, and this time was no different. Matthew was inclined to wait until after school starts so he won’t have the additional stress of going to seventh grade weighing him down. Kevin told Matthew that the stress of starting school won’t go away, it will just change to stress about homework. He also encouraged Matthew to test out the waffles this weekend. I agreed with Kev and having said our piece, we left him to ruminate.

Yesterday Matthew told us that he was ready to try the waffles today. Was he scared? Yup. But he was also determined. So this morning we hauled out the waffle iron and set to work making the batter. Was I stressed? Of course. Did cracking eggs into the bowl kind of freak me out? Absolutely. It’s something I haven’t done for a dozen years. But in spite of those emotions I felt as I taught Matthew how to crack eggs, I felt an overall sense of peace and calm. I honestly felt like everything was going to go well.

And guess what? It did. Things went perfectly. The waffles had no effect on Matthew other than to give him a full belly and a giant grin. I’m so proud of how much courage he showed in making this decision. Eating something that he has spent his whole life knowing would kill him is incredibly scary and I think he’s amazing for making the choice to move forward so quickly. We’ve looked at our calendar and we’ve decided that he’ll eat egg waffles for a month and then over Labor Day weekend we’ll switch to milk waffles. That gives all of us (and his body) time to get used to the egg waffle bit before we switch it up. If milk waffles go well, we’ll raise the stakes and do waffles with both milk and egg over fall break in October. I have high hopes for this whole process. I’ll pray, as I’m sure Matthew will, for things to continue to go well. As I’ve said before, this could be a game changer for him.

Oh, and it’s a good thing he likes waffles because we made a mountain of waffles so he can eat some every day. 😊

Good News!

Matthew’s food allergy treatment plan has kind of been on hold since our allergist retired a year and a half ago. The doc we saw last year was not a good fit for us. Not only was he not proactive in terms of getting more foods back in Matthew’s diet, but none of us were comfortable with him. Malia saw another allergist earlier this year and we were all much more comfortable with her. She has the attitude of getting my kids into as a normal a life as possible rather than just saying they can’t do or eat things (she suggested the gloves and pretreatment with antihistamines prior to horseback riding rather than suggesting Malia skip it all together), which is much more in keeping with our attitude about how life should be for our kiddos. While Matthew met her back in the spring, today was his first official visit with her.

We do bloodwork and skin prick testing on Matthew every year and there were some surprises this year. Matthew’s number for egg white is down to 10. That is lower than it has ever been! As a frame of reference, when he was three or four, his number hovered around 45, so 10 is amazing! Not only that, but the component testing of the egg proteins (component testing gives results for the individual proteins in each food rather than just the food as a whole) had some even better results. There are two proteins in eggs. One of them is considered “bad” because the protein doesn’t break down when it is cooked. The “good” protein does break down when cooked. Matthew’s number for the good protein is 12, which is fantastic. And here’s the best part-he tests negative for the bad protein!! So although he may never be able to eat eggs cooked sunny side up, eating fully cooked eggs may become a possibility in the future. His number for milk is down to 8 and casein (one of the proteins in milk) is at 6. So that’s fantastic too! Matthew and I were both so excited!

The skin prick testing still shows that he is allergic to the raw egg and milk, but his hives were only about the size of the tip of a pencil eraser. For a comparison, the hives for his environmental testing (grass in particular) were a couple of inches big. The doctor’s reaction to that was to state that Matthew is a very allergic individual. Yup. We’ve heard that before. On several occasions, actually.

With the results of the skin prick testing factored in, the doc presented us with a food plan. She wants Matthew to start eating waffles with eggs in them. After a few weeks, she wants him to switch to waffles with milk. If that goes well, waffles with both egg and milk are up next. And after that, we start trying cookies. How amazing is that?! Our excitement (and trepidation) ramped up with that news, but this is most definitely a proactive step forward. We’ve been playing the waiting game since the retirement of our original allergist, but I feel like we are finally back in motion. Matthew’s body is making some progress and if this all goes well, he will be making some big strides into being able to eat much more normally.