It's HOT outside!!!

I have a new favorite flour to cook with, Sorghum flour.. of course you don't normally use it by itself, but it's sweet and gives good flavor. I've made sugar cookies and biscuits with it so far and both have turned out GREAT!! (remember that's wheat/rye/oats/barley/soy/ dairy/egg/nut-free!!) I'm excited to see what else I can do with it. Though they were not pretty, I turned the biscuit mix into hamburger buns and they were great!! I was getting tired of the bean flour mixes... chocolate chip cookies should not have an aftertaste of garbanzo beans!! YUCK! I've been doing a lot of blog searching for allergy-free foods since I wasn't happy with everything being so heavy and gross.... and I can say I'm thankful for those that have come before me and are good at creating things in the kitchen!! Maybe someday I will be, but it takes experience! :)

I am happy to report that someone has given the newbie a chance and offered me a job in medical transcription! :) Pay is much better than what I have been doing and being an independent contractor, I set my own hours every day..... I won't always having someone bugging me about whether or not I can take an assignment. I will have my instructions and account or accounts given to me on Monday. I'm excited, my studying doesn't seem like such a waste now.

Next week starts school again for Michael. This should be the last week for the year, then back in September. It's nice that he's not working 2 jobs anymore, he has a chance to actually get his homework done w/o too many late nights.

Poor Audree, she's been sick all week... it seems like someone turned on the faucet in her nose. I thought she was getting better, but the sniffles have started turning into a cough. Hopefully it'll go away soon.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

I know I'm a little late, but I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's day! I did, we spent time with different family members throughout most of the day... was a busy day and by the time we finally got home in the evening, Audree was exhausted. I was grateful for that as she all of the sudden decided she's not going to take naps every day, yesterday being on of those days.

I was reading through some postings from other moms on one of my mommy forums and realized how much industry builds up holidays such as mother's day. Some of these posts, more like complaints, were about how horrible their day was because they still had to cook and clean and take care of the kids and do normal every day stuff...they didn't get their breakfast in bed and the house wasn't magically cleaned, and they didn't get a bubble bath with no interruptions. Maybe I'm just weird, but I don't expect the world to stop for me on Mother's Day because I'm a mother now.... I just wanted to comment back...get real!! This is life, not the movies or your favorite Hallmark commercial!! OK, enough complaining!

For those that know my sister is building a house, I just wanted to report that they are almost done!! They are closing on the 23rd and we are going over the clean next weekend. We will be moving them the following weekend, which, I believe, is a 3-day weekend. Hooray!!

Grow grass! Grow!!!

I'm excited to say we finally have grass seed put down in the yard! Woohoo! That means that the sprinklers are working.. I think Mich found at least 6 that were broken. There are others that should be replaced, but are working. It's amazing, some of the stuff we've found around here... especially the plumbing (inside and out). Our front yard, which had 8 sprinklers, had about 6 different kinds of sprinklers, the backyard is just as bad... Michael has even found metal pipes under the ground that connect the sprinkler system.

The hole in the middle of the backyard is not filled in yet, which was part of the reason for putting off the seeding.....but Audree and Mommy need a backyard to play in during the day, it's too nice to stay indoors. Our new neighbor wants to dig a hole in his backyard for a fire pit about the same size as the hole we had and is more than willing to let us have the dirt he digs up. They are busy doing some renovations and repair on the house before moving in, which includes fixing their fence between our yards... so when the fence comes down to be fixed, they'll just wheel the dirt on over!

Audree continues to change every day. She loves chasing mommy and daddy around the house in the evenings and it helps to wear her out for bedtime. :-) Tonight we ran a few errands with Ati (Auntie) and Tedo (Zephan), which she really enjoyed... we even went to see Daddy and Ucle (Uncle). Toward the end of our journey Audree was asking for her cup ........."cupa cupa cup cupa cupa" in her sweet little voices and I kinda heard her, but didn't as we were all talking at the same time...... next thing I hear "Mommy!!! Cup!!" She stopped us all in our tracks, it was funny and cute at the same time. So I turned around and said "please mommy".... "peeeeeeease!" Good enough for me! :)

I have been working more and more for the general transcription company that I started with at the beginning of April, but still no luck with a job in medical transcription. I was invited to test for one company, but have not heard back on whether I passed or not.... I've only been looking for a couple weeks, gotta remember to give it some time. It's hard for newbies to find jobs since everyone wants at least 2 years of expereience. Hopefully I'll find someone that'll give me a chance to prove myself.

Still hopeful...

Ok, so we got missy's allergy test results back today and went against everything the Doctor told us on Monday.. :0( Instead of getting better, all but one of her numbers went up quite a bit. He said to absolutely stay away from dairy, nuts and eggs as she is definitely allergic, as I was talking to the nurse today explaining how she reacts to milk she she comes into contact with it, he told me that is definitely an anaphylactic reaction, not sure about the other two, but I'm not willing to find out. The doctor also said to avoid all other food items to keep her skin from flaring up from eczema.... so we're back to where we were before, nothing changed...... no dairy, eggs, nuts, wheat, soy, rye, barley, oats and strawberries. That includes anyone kissing her that has had dairy, egss or nuts any time in the last 6 hours or touching her after eating w/o washing up.... sorry guys... i'm gonna have to really enforce it!!! Just call me the allergy police!! :-) Everytime someone that has had any dairy in the past several hours touches her, she has a rash (usualy on her face from kisses) for a day or two afterwards after the hives go away and her skin is really dry in that area for a couple more days.

However, he said that in most cases, for all but nuts, there is a spontaneous resolution of all allergies. I'm going to stay hopeful and keep praying.

HOORAY FOR POTENTIALLY FALSE POSITIVES!!!

As most of you already know, we have been on a strict diet with Audree as we were told told a year ago when she had her first allergy tests to avoid all items that came up as positive. Tough to do? You bet!!! But I'm proud to say that we've successfully done it! (diet with no nuts, dairy, eggs, wheat, soy, rye, barley, oats, strawberries... and I think a few others that I'm missing).

We had our first visit to to the allergist today, of whom I was very impressed with!! A doctor that will make a fool of himself and make elephant and monkey noises and silly motions to keep my daughter happy...and is a good Dr on top of that is worth his/her weight in gold!! I expected to go through the whole array of allergy tests, but in the end, all he did was send us for another blood test, which took 30 seconds.

He looked at her test results from last year and said that most likely a lot of those were false positives and the blood test isn't completely accurate. Now, as for milk, eggs and nuts, though, there's a definite allergy there, but the others, most likely she never really had an allergy to them. Geeeee, now you tell me!!! That could have saved a lot of heart ache!!! Audree's previous pediatrician posed as someone who was a specialist in allergies, but I'm now wondering what kind of training he actually had.

Anyway, back to our visit with the allergist..... he called for testing of everything that showed up positive last year to determine if her numbers have gone down at all, he will call next week with the results. He told me that as for the other foods (dairy, nuts, eggs), there is an 85% chance that those will go away by the time she is 5 yrs old. That's something I wanted to hear!

Don't get all excited yet! We still have to go through the introduction process of those foods that are potentially false positives to make sure that she tolerates them. We have already done wheat, I haven't been consistent with oats, but will get her on those and see how she does, then try the other grains one at a time and then strawberries and soy.

I tell you what, a diet free of dairy, eggs and nuts is a whole lot easier (and easier on the food bill) than what we have been doing the past year!! I'm excited for the results!!

We were also told a couple other things related to skin care... I had already taken her off the Johnson's baby washes and shampoos becuase I noticed she wasn't itching as much when we didnt use them... but they told us that the Johnson's brand is probly one of the worst things you can use a on a baby's skin because of all the fragrances and stuff in it.... smells pretty, but it's really not! I started using something that's all natural and it's not the best smelling when we're using it, but it's natural and no fragrances (all the ingredients are pronouncable) and not causing the itchies!! Also, dryer sheets are a no-no!!! They are hard on anybody's skin. If fabric softener is necessary, use the liquid stuff and do a second rinse. I'm guilty of dryer sheets... looks like I have a whole day of rewashing Dree's clothes ahead.