Starting school was a major change in many ways, fear, an-trepidation (on my part), excitement & thirst for adventure (on Mr.5's) plus new meal times to accommodate, not to mention our own intolerances & avoidances to adhere to plus others allergies to consider. The teacher has been very open-minded regards his intolerances & considerate to notify me of food events forthcoming, however the surprise birthdays haven't always been forewarned. The latter however have been handled so maturely by him, accepting that a friend may be providing sugary or coloured food that might affect his behaviour or tummy & confidently says "No, thank-you". I have then given him an alternative treat (home-baked) or small toy/stickers etc once home. His teacher was quite accepting of me providing a magazine article which highlighted food intolerances & behavioural associations, which assisted with her understanding.
Kinder was also a change, although we had been there previously, however its a new teacher & new child this time around. Plus with shortened hours & increased allergies at the centre, their food time has been cropped to just a shared fruit-platter ilo providing their own lunch box. This makes for easier exit from home when time poor & all you have to provide is a singe piece of fruit once a week instead of making the whole pack-up each session. The teacher has been totally onboard with intolerances having a child in her other group who is seriously anaphylactic & allergic to many foods. Avoiding bananas & preservatives (for Miss.3) is quite tame in comparison. She had also forewarned that birthday treats should be non-food if possible to consider others, then as a group we determined this would be the case & do simple gifts like a balloon, stickers, pencil etc. As the terms have progressed though this seems to have been forgotten by some & I often turn up for pick-up with her holding out a serviette with some sweet treat in-hand & a quizzical "Am I allowed for this?" desire. As we are usually heading home to lunch or dinner, I can avert her until after that, but she rarely forgets it & I find myself having to provide an alternate "treat", but she is not as satiated as Mr.5 with non-sugar replacements, especially if not pink & colourful!
We remained Failsafe for the the first couple of months of the year, but kept trying to re-introduce salicylates, & had started introducing supplements to improve mineral deficiencies - namely magnesium, iron, probiotics, & sun exposure for vitamin D. We also approached Cranial Osteopathy as another path to ease any underlying issues for the tic & anxiety, whilst also being recommended a naturopath & bio-meridian testing route to soothe the gut, at the same time as increasing real foods to naturally increase minerals & vitamins. Healing the gut & soothing the sympathetic nervous system have been our priority. Both are improving gradually. The tic has abated, even with increased salicylates, but anxiety has reoccurred on & off, some of that could be more circumstantial due to new experiences.
The naturopath has recommended some other dietary exclusions for 8 weeks, but also allowances to increase many fruits & vegetables, & healthy oils (olive & coconut) that were previously excluded. Currently the restrictions are Wheat, Dairy, Eggs, all Sugars (except Stevia) & Moulds/Yeasts. Baked goods are hard to achieve meantime, but the newly allowed fruits do provide some enjoyable alternatives, especially as pears were the only choice a while back. During the summer we had a glut of them as the tree in the garden really served us well. The kids loved being able to pick one straight from the tree for a sweet snack.
The garden itself has been a wonderful learning experience for the kids (& myself). In the raised beds we planted spuds, beans, carrots, leeks & choko, plus a handful of herbs. In pots we had chilli's & a dwarf lemon tree. In the beds I attempted to companion plant as best as possible to give them a good chance. They all did fairly well considering I'm total novice. The leeks were pretty feeble from seed though & I had better results with those from shop bought ones I regrew from its base roots. Next time I will leave a longer stem. Both the lemon & choko were affected by the weather extremes - choko the heat & lemon the storms, both survived but neither fruited, am hopeful they may come to something this spring. The only creepy crawlies that gave me any grief were caterpillars, I tried crushed eggshells as a natural deterrent but that didn't work for them. I now have added garlic, potato onions & brussels sprouts (from seed) as a winter crop.
I have been reading voraciously again about foods, health & gardening alongside some lighter material like rockstar biographies. The most insightful one though was Grain Brain, certainly food for thought & something I keep mindful of, given that some of my grandparents have suffered the ills that Dr.Perlmutter attributes wheat/grain to such as Alzheimers & Parkinsons. Wheat Belly was also top of the book list. Afterward I had a good try at baking sourdough bread with gluten-free grains, in an attempt to give us options... & save money, given some loafs are around $8. I had so many failures - bricks that thudded straight to the base of the bin, I decided that hand & my knackered old food processor were not tools of choice for this task. My culture survived well & was really good for buckwheat pizza dough which didn't seem to need as much effort in kneading. I really do want to try making gluten-free breads again, but have convinced myself that a Thermomix is my only friend & now working out how I go about getting one! I finally went to a demo last week, although I have been lusting after one for about 6 months. We still remain additive-free so with the lack of processed/convenience foods I'm spending more & more time in the kitchen that I truly believe I would gain some time savings, not to mention long-term financial as readily available alternative ingredients are not cheap. Party season is also upon us & the speed at which it would allow me to come up with 'treats' would be beneficial along with reduced washing-up of multiple appliances, crockery & utensils. So watch this space....
For todays party I made Zoo Poo, or as it was at a Farm, maybe I should call it Moo Poo, but essentially an alternative for chocolate rum-balls. The centre ingredient is banana, avocado, carob & nut spread. The outer - melted coconut oil, carob, stevia & desicated coconut. I froze in two stages to set. They substituted very well for the cake pops the others received - especially as mine got 3 each. The other provision was Ant bread in lieu of Fairy bread. I soaked some chia & poppy seeds in mashed banana & used as a spread on some soft spelt sourdough bread. Had I known the host was using pink sprinkles only I would have added a berry or 2 to the mix to achieve a similar colour... & add more fruity flavour.
I plan to blog more frequently now we are over the most hectic part of the year & worst of the changes. Kids are way more resilient to change than us mothers I believe! Glad to be back :)
Wow thank you very much for this creative content, this has really helped me a lot,specially first post of this site.
ReplyDeletei was at this confused point in my Memory Healer but after reading,this gave me more idea about how better my life could be.
Thank you very much for the effort and kindly keep posting something like this every time, it goes a long way to help people like us.
I also got help from another cool site Pure Reiki Healing like your too called Perfect Pure Reiki Healing which describes a lot about handling health. Thank you very much and I am gonna be here often.