You Know You Are the Parent of a Food Allergy Kid When...

For those of you that have not been there yet, check out the totally awesome site Kids With Food Allergies. (Yes, I was a Valley Girl in my youth. Really, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley - home of the Valley Girl) It is a really great place with lots of great information.

While I was reading the support forums, I came across a great post that made me laugh at our not so funny situation of being parents of a child with food allergies. Check out the post "You Know You are the Parent of a Food Allergy Kid" here.

Some of my favorites are...

"...DD playing "Mommy" with her doll is feeding from the WHITE (Neocate-color) disappearing liquid bottle after totally rejecting the orange one and then giving Baby a neb treatment.

You know you're a pofak when finding a new safe candy bar gets you as excited as a little kid on Christmas morning. And, you have to tell the stranger standing behind you in the line why you are so excited.

...you can glance at a list of 20+ ingredients in minuscule font and pick out all of your allergens (including derivatives) in less than a second."

Of course this inspired me to think of a few of my own...

You spend hours deciding on what sort of product you should carry your child's epi pen in, and then a few more hours deciding if you should get the carrier in red race car fabric, or the cool floral. In the end you finally decide to buy both so you can have your choice of which you want to carry.

You unabashedly hate an advertising figure, and blame him for the downfall of modern civilization simply because it is an advertising figure for the food your child is deathly allergic to.

So there Mr. Peanut - I hate you and am proud of it!!

Even though you can not cook to save your life, you learn to bake and decorate nut free, egg free and dairy free cakes in the shapes of dolls, 3-D cars, and every character imaginable, just so your allergic child can have a birthday cake that is cooler then everyone else's bakery bought ones.

When you first make the wacky cake recipe you learn that if you combine vinegar and baking soda, you can make a cool volcano type eruption.

You know that there is such a thing as egg free mayonnaise, and that it really does taste pretty good.

All your son wants for his 4th birthday is a red medical alert bracelet.

I am sure I have tons more, but I am all tapped out for now. I would love to hear other peoples.

I Found My Perfect Dog - The Peanut Detector Dog

Since Buster the pug has been getting up there in years, and had the big cancer scare, we have considered getting another dog to add to our household. Although Conor tested off the scales allergic to everything including dogs, we have had Buster since before he was born, and with general precautions like keeping Buster out of the bedrooms, and regular washing/grooming, Conor seems to be ok with him.

So, I started doing some research into what sort of dog we would be interested in next. Although Pugs are totally awesome little dogs they do SHED ALL OVER EVERYTHING!. Mick was also interested in getting a bit bigger dog, since we have the space for it since we moved. Much to my delight, I discovered that there are many non-shedding dogs such as the Poodle, Shit Tzu, Kerry Blue Terrier, and the greyhound. While I liked all these dogs, I was not sure how good they were for our family with three sweet little things running around. Then I came upon my answer - the Doodles. That is right, the Labradoodle, and the Goldendoodle. These dogs are combinations of Labradors and Golden Retreivers and poodles. They have the great disposition of the Labs, but are breed to have the non shedding coat of the Poodle. WOOO HOOOO

On my final scan of the Internet, I then came across my dream dog. The Peanut Detection Dog. That is right, a dog that can detect peanuts with a whiff of its nose.

These are special breeds of dogs specially trained to recognize the scent of minuscule amounts of peanuts, pretty much like those trained to sniff explosives or narcotics

According to their website peanutdog.com

"A Peanut Detector Dog is a valuable tool for a person with an allergy to peanuts. Since a dog’s sense of smell far surpasses that of humans, detection of odors is a perfect job for these dogs. Our Peanut Dogs, undergo extensive training, are easily able to detect minute quantities of peanuts in any form; raw, cooked, oil, butter, dust, etc."

Imagine, going to a restaurant with Fluffy the peanut detector dog, and letting him sniff everything on Conor's plate before he eats it to make sure it really is peanut free like the waiter said. Fluffy can scan the park and discover hidden jars of peanut butter, or a misplaced peanut butter sandwich. He could probably even sniff out Mr. Peanut from a slew of advertising papers. Think of the possibilities.

All my excitement crashed down however, when I saw the price...... 10,000 dollars. Yikes!!!

I can dream however. Maybe I will win the lottery.