Our new family member!

Greg and Andrea got a puppy, Nymeria (they'll call her Nym)--any Game of Thrones fans out there??? ;)  They picked her up and then brought her by 30 minutes later.  She is ADORABLE, of course, but with both Anja and Finn allergic to dogs, this made things slightly tricky.  I actually forgot about Anja being allergic and had to give her a big dose of meds because the dog touched her.  Finn was not allowed to touch her, and she didn't get to be on any furniture.  He DID get to pet her once with some gloves on, so that took the sting away for him just a bit.  ;)  

Lauren, Nym, and Jonas.  

Check out Lauren's smokin' new hair!

CLASSIC Lauren look.  

Finn and Anja watching a little Gabba Gabba.  

Finn was in love with Claire's hoodie and wanted to wear it.  He looked like a little teddy bear while wearing it.  So cute.  

Finn Update:

I brought Finn back into the allergist today for some follow-up testing.  When we had the blood tests done three weeks ago he tested positive, without any doubt, to:  sesame of any kind, and cats and dogs.  He tested "less allergic", but still allergic, to milk, eggs, peanuts, and soy.  The Dr. wanted to re-test those last 4 on his skin because they were so much lower in severity than the first three.

So, we tested those 4 on his back, and the results are:

Finn is NOT allergic to soy and eggs!  Hallelujah!  Soy is in EVERY form of processed food, so that would be a pain to avoid...unless I was super mom and never fed my kids anything that might possibly be bad for them.  I am not super mom.  They eat hot dogs for sure.  Also, Finn loves eggs, and it's such a cheap and healthy form of protein!

Finn IS allergic to dairy and peanuts.  Neither of them will kill him if he eats them, obviously, since he has had  dairy in small amounts for the past year (but I've never given him peanut butter or anything peanut intentionally).  So, that stinks, but in reality it's not a big deal.  It changes almost nothing in how I cook or prepare food for the kids.  I already almost never cook with butter, only olive oil.  We don't drink milk, other than Jonas having some 1/2 and 1/2 in his coffee.  The only time I really use butter in when making cookies or something like that.  Finn already eats Layla's imitation vegan butter on toast.  I never buy sour cream.  I never buy yogurt, etc.

The ONLY thing I am sad about is cheese.  Jonas and I will still eat cheese on our pizzas, because...well, fake cheese is gross.  Finn had just decided that he liked cheese a month ago!  He asks for cheese for snacks, so I guess that has to stop for him, but really...that's about it.  Sigh.  I love cheese.  I could give up everything else about dairy easily, but cheese?  That is what I missed the most when I was dairy free those two looooooong times.

So this will all be relatively painless for me, but a pain in the butt for other people to factor in when thinking about him.  Schools especially.  :(

The good news:  the Dr. thinks it is VERY likely he will outgrow the dairy allergy.  We will test him again in a year to see if it is decreasing at all.  Also, the Dr. said that if he got small amounts of diary here and there, by accident, it's not going to hurt his chances of outgrowing it at all.  Phew.  Because, I KNOW sometimes he is going to get dairy, and so now I don't have to freak out.  However, I should try to avoid it whenever possible.

The bad news:  the Dr. thinks it very UNLIKELY that he will outgrow the sesame, cats and dogs, or peanut allergies.  However, we will test the peanut allergies again before he starts school, since that is something schools freak out about--rightly so.  He does not need an eppi pen right now, so that's a relief.

Summary of the allergies in the Schaefer house:

Layla = dairy, eggs, soy (very mild, not something we avoid in her food).

Finn = sesame, dairy, cats, dogs, peanuts.

Lisa = nothing.

Jonas = nothing.

What the HECK???  :)

Awwwwww, man!

Two Fridays ago I took Finn in to see the allergist.  They did some blood work to determine if his craaaaaazy sensitive, break-out-prone skin is just that...crazy skin...or if it is caused by something else.

AND, he has allergies.

UGH.

I was really hoping I was crazy and that it wasn't what my intuition told me it was.

He is off-the-charts allergic to sesame of any kind, which explains his reactions to hummus those two times he has had it.

He is extremely allergic to cats and dogs.  Jonas is now very depressed about the dog we will never have, and he wonders how on earth his children will survive a childhood without one, but frankly I'm relieved.  While I enjoyed having a dog growing up, I have never wanted to own one as an adult (for about 15 reasons that I can list but I won't)...other than to run with a big dog, but heck, I'll borrow one if I can't get over that desire.  ;)

He is also somewhat allergic to egg whites, soy, peanuts, and one other one that I forget right now.

I should have paperwork in front of me to explain all of this, but it never showed up, so I had to call the office today to see what was up.  They are sending me the paperwork again, but I'll be taking Finn back in anyway to re-test those 4 "slightly" allergic ones.  This last time they did a blood draw, so they'll likely schedule the back skin test to see if they get the same reaction.  We'll talk game plan then too.

All of these things are totally in the realm of "easy to live with."  Allergic to eggs?  So he doesn't eat eggs.  Allergic to dogs?  So we don't go around dogs.  Easy.  At least, easy at the first glance....but the food stuff has me more and more concerned as a Mom.

Why on earth do my kids have these allergies???  I'll be doing some more investigating with the doctor I guess.  As far as I know, there are no known food allergies on either side of our family tree...so why both my kids get the short end of the stick is beyond me.  Poor kiddos.  Maybe our genes just mix to create crazy mutations?? ;)

More to come...