It's getting better

Tori has been incredibly picky lately. Which isn't easy given her diet is so limited to begin with. It has been very hard to make sure she is getting everything she needs. This weekend, though, we had a HUGE breakthrough! Tori has not really been a fan of meat. She eats chicken nuggets and hot dogs. Oh and sometimes turkey lunch meat. Hardly meat products. But of course, we always offer it to her. And she chews and chews and we think she likes it. Then she spits it out. But this weekend, during the gator game, I was eating wings. She crawled up in my lap and asked for some. She ate it and asked for more! Then crawled over to Min's lap and kept eating!! Yay!!! So I'm already thinking ahead to dinner this week to see what we can make.

Prior to tonight, my Asian baby has not liked rice. Weird, right? We were at a Chinese restauarnt tonight, and she loved it. We put some in front of her with a fork and she ate it!! Yay!! She had a hard time with the little grains of rice since it wans't very sticky, but we're going to try chicken and rice this week.

I feel like we really turned a corner this weekend.

AND, she went up the ladder of the bouncehouse at Kaitlyn's party (with the help of Ella) but slid down the slide by herself. AND rode a rocking horse that we've had for about 6 months that we originally had to move to a different room because she was petrified of it. What a weekend!

18 Month Check-up

Tori's 18 month check-up.

height - 31 1/2 in (50%)

weight - 20 lbs. 15 oz. (8%)

milestones - Tori is a little chatterbox. Let's count how many words she can say. Mommy, daddy, Titi (Tori), up, down, please, thank you, hi, bye, night night, kitty, and others I'm sure I'm missing. She can recognize and say the sound that many animals make. I said last check up that her blowing kisses was the cutest thing ever. That was until she started to try jumping. She thinks she's jumping but her feet clearly don't leave the ground. So freaking cute. She's getting better at feeding herself with utensils, although not perfect yet. The food issue is still the food issue. (See previous allergy posts and problems below.) She has all of her teeth with the exception of her last 4 molars and her hair is growing like a weed.

problems - sigh...allergies. Although the allergist said milk was fine per the skin test, our pediatrician suggested taking it out since she's not as better as she should be. So now she is wheat, egg, soy, and milk free and gets zyrtec every night and a rub down twice a day with various lotions. It's quite a challenge, but we're dealing. I think her skin is way better than it was before, so that makes me happy.

OMG! I almost forgot the singing! She is developing quite the passion for song. Especially head shoulders knees and toes and baa baa black sheep. She makes me smile with every thought of her. :) I love my baby girl.

Who knew? 2

We had a recent windfall! After doing some research (that I probably should have done earlier) I found out soybean oil, soy oil, and soy lecithin are all ok for soy allergies since they don't have the soy protein. This adds back a handful of products and at this point, I'll take anything I can get!

Eating as a family

Please tell me how old your kids were when you were able to all eat the same meal as a family. Tori is now 18 months. She eats ok. She eats basic kid things. And she used to try new things. I know eating together is important, and with my new job, it's easier for me to cook dinner so we can all sit down and have a real cooked meal, which I love. With her allergies, I've been adjusting recipes and trying new things (with trial and error, often in fail), but she just won't try things. Am I trying to do this too early? I feel like now we are suffering with the above mentioned fails and all for nothign when she is not even trying it.

So should I continue to make egg and wheat free chicken cutlets (rice flour and buttermilk), wheat free broccoli rice and cheese casserole, and wheat and egg free meatloaf in the hopes that one day she will join us or cook things the way I know how to cook them and re-visit this later?

Who knew?

Now this is just getting ridiculous. We use baby Aveeno shampoo and soap since our doctor thought the Johnson and Johnson was too harsh for her skin waaaay back when. Yeah, the shampoo has wheat. WTF?!? So I'm off to Target tomorrow (to probably buy some J&J shampoo!). So I've basically been bathing my child in one of her worst allergens her entire life. I hope this relieves the itchy head at least.

Our new diet

See previous post. We took Tori to an allergist and they did the skin test, which is apparently more accuate than the blood test. Weird, right? Anyway, they tested her for soy in case the milk came back allergic, since soy would have to be her alternative. Well, good news! She's not allergic to milk. But she is allergic to soy. So the final list - wheat, egg whites, soy, cats, and dogs. Sigh...here we go!

Off to Whole Foods we went. We bought bread, bread crumbs, flour, pizza crust, crackers, oatmeal animal crackers, fruit and cereal bars, pastas, frozen chicken nuggets, cereal, and egg replacer. Yes, egg replacer. It's powder. It's weird. The bread is like 12 times heavier than regular bread and 100 times drier. The pizza dough, though, was a HUGE hit. I see a lot of pizza in our future.

The wheat-free is doable. Just look for gluten-free. It's all the rage now. The egg-free is ok. It made the pizza dough difficult, but we are finding stuff. You know what is surprisingly difficult is the soy. Look at your labels (I know many of you are label readers!). Soy lecithin, soy sauce, soybeans, soybean oil. FYI - vegetable oil may contain soybean oil. So, we thought for a second we could look for vegan stuff to address the egg situation. Just kidding! Everything vegan has soy!

So my Asian-Italian daughter can't eat soy sauce or pasta. WTF?!? We are one week in and don't really see a difference yet. But we do still have the cats while finding a home for Izzie. And the doctor said it could take a couple of weeks to see progress. We are going to try to keep Thumper, though. Just lots of vaccuming and keeping Tori's room cat-free. We can't part with her without putting up a fight.

It's going to be an interesting journey. If anyone has any suggestions or tips, feel free to share. I'll keep you updated!

Allergies

We got the results of Tori's allergy test back today. Nothing good. Per the blood work, she is highly allergic to milk, cats, and dogs, and slightly allergic to wheat and eggs. What the hell?!?! How are we supposed to eat macaroni and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches and breakfast egg sandwiches??! I'm so bummed. The doctor said to go to an allergist before making any changes at home. Since we're goign out of town, we can't go until next week at the earliest. I'm really sad about this though. I mean, it's good to know, but seriously, could the answer have been any worse for a kid's diet?

15 Months

I know, I know. I am AWFUL at this whole blog thing. But let's focus on me for just one second. I got a new job!!!! What does this mean for Tori's blog? Clearly, more time to maybe focus on this thing more than once every 3 months. So here's to more frequent future posts.

height - 30 3/4 (50%)

weight - 19 lb, 4 oz (7%)

milestones - holy miss independent! Tori does not need us anymore, nor does she want us! She walks on her own, which is great, but she won't hold our hand. Which is awesome. ... She recognizes friends her age, including our neighbors who are 2 months younger and 3 months older. She blows kisses, which is the cutest thing and waves good bye. She gets pickier and pickier with her food every day. Isn't it suppsoed to get better?? One day she likes something, the next day not at all. So we just try to roll with it and not commit to any one food. She has started to be more interested in some things if she can feed it to herself. Like yogurt. We tried this one out in a restaurant. (see below) She has 12 teeth fully in and her 4 I teeth coming in now.

problems - still dry, itchy skin all over her body. The doctor finally decided it was time for allergy testing. He decided we shouldn't still be talking about her itchy skin, so I took her yesterday to get blood drawn to get her tested. She did sooooo well. She cried out when the needle went in and when they took it out, but there was no squirming, no screaming, not even a tear!! I went in with so much anxiety, and left feeling so proud of her.

On a random side note, we finally had to start putting her hair in pigtails to get it out of her face. I think she looks like an anime character now, but at least her hair isn't in her eyes anymore.

12 Month Checkup

...almost a month late...

height - 29 1/4 (50%)

weight - 18 lb, 4 oz (10%)

milestones - stands up with no help; creeps all around the place with the help of furniture and "walks" holding on to our fingers; speaks a number of syllables non-stop; tries eating almost everything we give her but often decides all of a sudden she doesn't like it; we are working on having her feed herself with her fork; started drinking milk from her sippy cup but doesn't love it; 4 bottom teeth and 4 top teeth; separation anxiety is more pronounced;

problems - still dry skin all over her body; and I think we are removing her earrings until a much later date due to her skin's reaction to them.

Dr. said that although her weight gain is slowed, he is not concerned. (Although, I was a little bit unsettled myself when I just typed 10%...) Said developmentally she is doing well. Once we run out, we will stop formula.

She is definitely developing her own personality. And we definitely have a daycare baby. She picks up other babies' attitudes while I'm sure developing her own. She yells when she doesn't get what she wants, and definitely knows what she wants. I'm sure my sister is smiling right now...I did get a daughter just like me. ;) Some of it might be our fault. Like when we offered her a crumpled up bag and took it away right as she reached for it. She thought it was funny, so we did it some more. Yeah, now she does it to other kids...we're jerks...

And since I'm a month late, I can add the update that Tori is walking just before 13 months. :)

Tori turns 1!!!

My baby turned 1 yesterday!! We went to dinner with my family and had a little cake for her. She loved diving in and grabbing a handful of icing. :) She finally figured out how to clap on her birthday. She was in such a good mood at dinner...singing, dancing, making silly faces.

I am so happy to see her growing and developing and learning. But what I wouldn't give to be hanging out at home with my newborn girl again. Mostly because 1. I would be with Tori and 2. I wouldn't be working.

Looking forward to her birthday party this weekend. 30 of our closest friends and family at the park. It's going to be good times! Here's to a great 2nd year!

Finger foods

Tori just this week decided she's done with baby food. They wanted to switch her over to finger foods at daycare anyway to get her ready for the next room. Do you guys have any unique ideas for meals I can send to daycare? Here are some things I have so far...

toast
cheese stars
pasta (we use the Muellers garden delight pasta...made w/ veggies!)
fruit (although we still have to experiment with this one)
rotisserie chicken pieces
baked chicken nuggets
yogurt (clearly not a finger food but they will feed her that)

Anything else you can think of?