Good Thing He's Cute...

Crunch. "Ouch!". That's the sounds that come out of my kitchen at 5am when I'm stumbling to find a bottle in the fridge for Kaleb and step barefoot onto little toddler puffs he's dropped on the kitchen floor.  After the initial pain, I usually laugh to myself as I think about him sitting in his high chair, purposely dropping them onto the floor - if he only knew!

For 3 long years, I dreamed of becoming a mom and having moments like this. Let me just say, they are everything I'd hoped they would be. I loooooovvvveeee seeing his face light up when I pick him up from daycare, and the day he learned to say "mama" has been forever engrained in my memory. But parenthood has also come with an extra set of challenges I never foresaw.

Most everyone knows that around 4 months old, Kaleb was diagnosed with Torticollis - a problem with the muscles in his neck. He had several sessions of physical therapy and countless hours of working with him at home to get him to be able to turn his head both directions. While this has been corrected, he is still later to reach most milestones - rolling over, crawling, walking. He gets there, it just takes him a little longer.

Then around 6-7 months when we started introducing food, we learned he had food allergies. Over the last 4 months, we've had extensive testing and learned he's severely allergic to milk and eggs. (He breaks out and swells up if you hold him after you've touched these things!) His milk allergy is so severe, I had to give up breastfeeding earlier than I had hoped because living a dairy free lifestyle was just too hard for me.

His food allergies have also caused a lot of sleepless nights. Kaleb's poor belly hurts so bad, he would wake up every 20-30 minutes and scream in pain. He cried, I cried... Let me just say, this aspect of parenthood came with a big slice of humble pie. I can't tell you how many times I previously said "my child will never sleep in my bed". Let me tell you what, after about 4 months of NO sleep, you do what you have to do. And if that means sleeping with a child between you and your husband, you'll do it.

So around a year old, we made the switch to alternative milk. We've been through soy, almond, coconut, and now on to rice milk. When comparing to regular milk, the price of a gallon of alternative milk can be up to $10 per gallon. And a toddler goes through about 2 gallons per week!!  Then came even more...after quitting breastfeeding and switching to other milk, *TMI alert*, Kaleb started having diarrhea 10-12 times per day. I'm pretty sure his daycare workers hate me! We are now thinking he may have a wheat/gluten allergy and are going gluten free for a while to see if we can get this under control.

So here's my purchases for tonight. $11 for a SMALL loaf of gluten free bread and a bag of spaghetti noodles. This kid is going to bleed me dry financially!

We're praying this is a solution to all the problems he's still having. Living an allergy-free lifestyle has been a huge shift for me. Cooking dinner is no longer a hamburger helper kind of thing...it's a thoughtfully planned out meal for 3 MEALS A DAY!

Through all this I'm learning patience, praying for strength and trying to completely turn over everything to our great God who's able to heal him from all of this.  I've decided to blog this journey as much as I can for a memory in the future - as we hope one day we'll be able to look back and laugh and say "Man, you were a TOUGH kid - it's a good thing you were cute!" ;)