Cheese, please

Our little ones are growing like weeds (the lovely,flowery ones of course) - it's getting hard to keep up with them (and the blog!) because the busy life of having two little ones is keeping us constantly on the go. Luckily, we love it!

The most exciting news on the home front is that Elise is possibly easing up on her food intolerance issues! As you know, she has had reactions (rashes, severe eczema, blisters, massive stomach pain) to dairy and soy since she was a wee little one. The pediatrician told us that most children outgrow the milk protein intolerance by the time they are a year, and most of those who don't will then outgrow it by 2 and then the majority of the remaining children outgrow it by the time they are 5. Since she was about a year old, we've been giving her a fair amount of dairy-laced food periodically to test out whether or not she has outgrown the problem. To this point, every one of these "test" cases has ended with Elise having a horrible rash, gross eczema and quite a bit of pain.

We hadn't tried much for a few months. So last Friday, Marty went on a field trip with Elise's class and they stopped at a pizza place for lunch. All of the other kids were eating pizza, so Marty took the no-time-like-the-present mentality and let Elise dig in to the pizza along with her pals.

So, it's not that she didn't have any reaction, because she did get a rash. BUT it was a fairly mild rash considering that she had three (small) pieces of cheese pizza. And shockingly her stomach did not appear to bother her at all. In addition to the rash being fairly minor (for her - she is the rash queen. Her pediatrician said she could write an entire rash book using only Elise as the study) it also didn't seem to bother her. A lot of times she complains about the rashes being itchy and painful - none of that this time! It appears she may be rounding the bend and in the homestretch of her intolerance issues. Hooray!

Several weeks ago, well before this exciting bit of news, I had a hilarious exchange with Elise and her buddy Audrey as I was picking up Elise from daycare. Audrey asked what we were going to have for dinner that night and I told her that we were probably going to have chicken. Audrey said she doesn't eat chicken. I turned to Elise and explained that "Audrey is a vegetarian: she doesn't eat meat." Elise nodded in complete understanding and said "Yeah, I am a vegetarian to cheese."

Well, Elise you may not be a "vegetarian to cheese" for much longer!

Speaking of cheese, our little ham Lucas is the King of Cheese. Not only would this boy pound cheese by the fistful if we let him (he LOVES anything to do with cheese and eats it like its going out of style) but he also loves saying the word cheese. He has apparently learned that any time a camera is within a 50 foot radius of him, he should be camera ready and say cheese. This is not only adorable but it also results in a lot of fabulous smiley pictures of him!