Uh-Oh...

Quick update:
Sooo... we ran out of all varieties of 'milk' over the weekend.  My husband was very helpful and ran to the store to get milk.  I forgot to specify not to buy actual cow's milk, so of course, that's what he came home with.  Since milk is in fact what most people buy when they go to the store to buy milk.

Now, I am one of those people who will finish the crusts off my kids' grilled cheese sandwiches no matter what because a) I loooove grilled cheese but feel too guilty about eating them to ever fix them for myself and b) I HATE WASTING FOOD.

So we just dove right in, and started drinking the milk.  Well, Mini, Pickle and Yummy did.  Just to be clear.  They all had a cup Sunday night, and two cups Monday and Tuesday.  And Yummy (who is 2 and would prefer to get milk all day intravenously rather than eat solid food) had probably two additional cups - one for naptime and one for bedtime, in addition to one at breakfast and one after dinner.  That's a lotta milk.

So call me crazy (it's happened before, and I can take it) but Yummy has had a runny nose all day.  It's running faster than my friend's husband Bryan runs away from Triscuits.  (It's an inexplicable phobia.)
And about a half hour after he went to bed he started coughing.  And coughing and coughing and coughing... a very dry, asthmatic, borderline croupy sounding cough.

Is this my answer?  I hate to jump to conclusions, and this is hardly a controlled study, but it seems like an interesting development, right?
Or maybe Yummy just got an actual cold and I'm crazy for thinking this way...
What do you think?

Food, Indeed

Stephen Colbert recently pointed out that something like eight percent of American children have some kind of food allergies.  He followed up the statistic with "Luckily, very little of what they eat is actually food."

So true.

I think 'real food' is what eating clean is really all about.  I subscribe to Michael Pollan's mantra: "Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants."  In his book In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan points out the same thing that Stephen Colbert was getting at: a huge portion of the calories we consume every day shouldn't really be classified as 'food' at all. 

While trying to clean up my kids' diets and get them a bit healthier, I will be mainly following Pollan's directive, and subscribing to the 'moderation in all things, even moderation' school of thought.  

I have had friends ask what I will do about ice cream, butter, cheese, etc.... for the weeks that we are dairy free.  We'll be avoiding them.  

I won't buy milk.  I won't buy ice cream.  But I figure a quesadilla every two weeks or so is not the same thing as 4-5 cups of milk every day, which is what they were used to before.  A week and a half in, they've complained a bit.  Particularly Mini.  She misses the milk, and has not yet developed a taste for rice milk.  The good news is, she doesn't miss it at all on cereal - only when drinking it plain.

And since quesadillas and mac'n'cheese are for the most part off the menu, it's forced me to be a bit more creative with what I serve for lunch.  They've had fried rice, spaghetti, PB&J, chicken nuggets, pita chips w/hummus (yes, my kids - in an odd break with their all-American junk-food tastebuds, love hummus) and discovered that they might not in fact die without a serving or two of cheese every day. 

The good news is that as I mentioned previously, we've all had a cold.  Oh, wait, that's not good news at all.  The real good news is that normally ANY little respiratory infection means Pickle and Yummy have terrible asthma around the clock, requiring breathing treatments every four hours.  Around the clock.  Pickle frequently coughs until he throws up, and is unable to stop coughing even then.  It's a mess.  Literally.  So even though he went to the doctor Sunday and does indeed have an ear infection (grrrr) for which he's taking antibiotics (again.... sigh) I think that the asthma part has been quite under control.  He has only thrown up once, and only had two breathing treatments this week.  Ordinarily, the throw-up count would be in the double digits, and let's see... quick math here (a non-possibility for me) - the breathing treatment count would be up in the thirties by now.  

We're obviously not 100% yet, but I'm hopeful that I may be seeing real improvement and not just imagining that they're getting well...  

I have a friend who doesn't restrict dairy unless her kids get sick - then they stay off it until the contagion passes and take it up again.  I may end up on that track.  We'll see.  If I don't see any benefit/improvement over the next couple of months I think we'll be back on the cow so to speak, but maybe more selective about only buying organic (not just on the weeks when I'm not feeling broke, as I've been doing for this past year or so).

If I just outed myself for not being an actual animal-lover and using shameless propaganda to brainwash my 7 yr old Mini, then so be it.  Don't get me wrong.  I do love animals. As long as I don't have to touch them.  I want them to have happy lives full of fresh air and food and dignity.  Far far away from me.

I'm not virtuous enough to eliminate animal products from my diet at this point.  Maybe someday.  But for now, I'm focusing on eating Food.  With a capital F.  As opposed to Pollan's 'food-like substances'.  And for now, sorry to all the chickens, cows, and all manner of sea creatures:  that includes you.

When Mama Ain't Happy

Last night I heard an interesting bit of trivia on PBS, which stated that in married couples, when the wife sleeps poorly, BOTH husband and wife tend to be miserable the next day.  I tried not to take this personally.  I did, however, immediately check my house for bugs (and Dr. Phil-style peeping cameras) since I can only assume that someone has observed this trend in my family.

As yet I haven't found anything.

I have, however, slept poorly all week.  I have a cold.  With body aches that feel like I got run over by a large vehicle of some kind.  

Yesterday I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned (more excavation than cleaning if you must know) and by 5pm, the house was FINALLY clean enough to start cleaning.  So I vacuumed.
Then I called my husband and told him to pick up a pizza on the way home from work.  

I did specify 'scant' cheese on our order - and it was soooo delicious I'm skeptical of how scanty that scattering really was.  

The bad news is that Pickle now has an ear infection (unrelated to the pizza, I'm sure... we've all been passing this cold around this week) and was in bed with me last night.  

So I can only assume that my poor husband is going to have a miserable day today.  

At least now we know who to blame for it.

For more info on interpersonal sleep skills (and a little laugh) click here:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/do-not-operate-this-marriage-while-drowsy/9839/

PS - Other than the pizza last night, our dairy avoidance has been a smashing success.  Mini, Pickle and Yummy are all gravitating toward rice milk quite willingly.  I may be pushing them gently in that direction since I am suspicious of how good soy really is for children in large quantities, and they don't sell coconut milk or almond milk at our Costco.  ($$$)

Step 1: Eliminate Dairy

So I think I once heard Ben Stiller say that you can milk pretty much anything.  
Not that I would know.  I did not, in fact, milk any soybeans or coconuts this week, but I did decide to cut the dairy first.  My kids (referred to henceforth as Mini (she's 7), Pickle (he's 5) and Yummy (he's 2) LOVE milk.  (FYI, Yummy is at this moment climbing up one side of my face in an attempt to kiss the other side of my face.  I apologize if you're having trouble picturing that.  Or maybe you're lucky.) They drink a big cup every morning (sometimes with chocolate, sometimes without) first thing after getting out of bed.  They drink it after lunch.  They drink it before bed, then they usually have another cup IN bed if they're having trouble falling asleep.  All this milk is not only packed with sugar but is difficult for most humans who are no longer infants to digest.  It is a common allergen and can trigger respiratory symptoms, eczema, digestive problems and asthma.
SO.
I sat Mini, Pickle, and Yummy down over the weekend and explained that I thought we should try to stop drinking milk.  Pickle was fine with this.  He loves chocolate milk, but doesn't usually drink milk plain.  Yummy is 2 yrs old, and was oblivious.  Mini, on the other hand, entered what I like to call Meltdown Mode.  She sat on the kitchen stool crying.  Actual tears.  Explaining how much she loves milk, and how she could never learn to love anything new as much as she loves cow's milk.
Well, Tuesday morning, we ran out of that precious cow's milk.  She sat at the kitchen counter, and tearfully sipped the last drops.  I could see that she was less than enthusiastic about this little experiment.  So I just asked her a question.
I asked her:  Where does milk come from?
Mini:  Cows.
Me:  Who is that milk for?
Pause.
Mini:  Baby cows?
Me:  Exactly.  [At this point I gave her a VERY mild G-rated version of a day-in-the-life of the average American dairy cow, including such tragic details as cows that are hooked up to machines continuously, and don't get to go outside or walk around.  Ever.  If you think you're ready for the grown-up version, go watch Food, Inc.  Now.  No, seriously...]

***

After a quick trip to the health-food aisle of our local Smith's Marketplace, I got out a newly purchased package of tiny dixie cups, and four kinds of 'milk'.  I labeled each of the cups, and gave them each a sample of soy, rice, almond and coconut milk.  I told them I wanted to hear lots of adjectives to describe what they were tasting, but they couldn't say the word "yucky".  If they needed to, they could tell me which one was "not their favorite".  

Success!  Mini and Pickle both tasted all the options, and each picked one they wanted to finish drinking.  

Taste test results:  Mini preferred coconut milk, and Pickle preferred soy. 

***

Today was Day 2 of being dairy-free.  And apart from a minor skirmish today with Mini who wanted a quesadilla for lunch today, it's all going pretty smoothly.  Yummy thinks all the milks are pretty, well, yummy.  And both Mini and Pickle have discovered that (shockingly) ALL the milks taste pretty darn good with a big scoop of Nesquik.  

Hmmm.... not looking forward to tackling sugar later this summer...