The Sports Car of the Nebulizer World

We finally sent Grampoo on his way back to Los Angeles. Whew!! that was a close one!!



Anyways I have spent the last few days trying to prepare for our trip. One of our major concerns was our nebulizer. I must bring a nebulizer. I have previously publicly professed my love for our nebulizer here. However I have been very concerned about dragging our grey brick like thing overseas on an airplane. In addition to it's rather portly size and weight, we also need to be able to plug it into the international electric circuits. Think what would happen if I blew out the nebulizer. It could be smoking, and I might just think it was the normal smoke that comes from it.



We went to my favorite allergist the other day. (Grampoo was still here, and I did not trust him to watch the little people alone, so he sat in the waiting room at the Dr, and I took 3 little children in with me to see the Dr. . FUN!)



After explaining our problem to our awesome allergist she showed me something that got my heart racing with excitement. I realized this is what some people must feel when they see a sports car. It was sleek and compact. It had smooth lines and technical innovation. It fit in the palm of my hand, but could handle its big job silently. The horsepower was incredible, and it could run on batteries, ac/dc, and even had a European adapter. I reached over to caress it, and knew I must have it at all costs.........

The Aeroneb Go Nebulizer system

The appropriate arrangements were quickly made, and this beauty was delivered to my door yesterday evening. I admired it yet again, and even liked the cool fish mask that came with it. Now I am just waiting for Conor to cough so I can take it for a test drive.

You Would Think Grampoo Would Know Better

Wow, this has been one tough week. Everyone is off for spring break, I am Au Pair less, and I am trying to juggle 3 sweet young things whose main form of entertainment seems to be fighting with each other, and playing, lets annoy Mommy any time we are driving in the car. Fun!!

Anyways, Grampoo decided to come up and "help" out for a few days during the week. "Help" is of course a very relative word. I think he thinks he is helping, but I don't really know how much help it is. OK, not so much. Grampoo also does not get the whole peanut allergy thing. He should. He is allergic to penacillin, and some other drug, and has had some pretty severe reactions himself. But does he get it???? NO!

We went to McDonalds yesterday to have lunch. I stupidly let him go order the desserts....2 ice cream cones, and 2 hot fudge sundaes with no nuts. He walks over to the table with the desserts on the tray, and the two evil packets of peanuts sitting there. Thinking the counter person at McDonalds had just made a mistake and given him the peanuts, I tell him to either give the peanuts back or throw them away. My husbands father in law then sticks them in his pocket and says they are gone. When I respond that a jacket pocket does not equal gone, he kindly informs me that he is going to take them home (our home of course) and put them in his luggage so he can eat them on the airplane ride home.

After banging my head against the wall for a while, I insisted that he throw the peanuts away. I tried to explain to him why, but he just did not get it. Forget that he is also then planning to eat peanuts on an airplane, and then........Hello!!!! I said maybe someone else's grandchild who is allergic to peanuts would be sitting next to him, but got no understanding of the situation. I think I need a vacation from Grampoo......

OK, I am off to go and search Grampoo's luggage and jacket for any further contraband........

Who knows what I might find. I hope I find some money....

Flying With Food Allergies

As things are starting to settle into a routine again, we somehow decided to go on a big vacation to Ireland in two weeks to visit Nana. Mick grew up in Ireland, and most of his family is still there including his mother, sister and 2 brothers and their families. We got a great deal on tickets, and at the spur of the moment decided hey, what the heck.

Now, exciting as this is, once the excitement wore off a bit, I realized that traveling with 3 little children is a challenging endeavor. But traveling with a child with life threatening food allergies and asthma is a whole other ball of wax.

We did travel to Ireland 2 years ago, and we were aware of Conor's peanut allergy. That trip went fine with no major reactions. (we did not know of the egg allergy at the time, and just could not figure out why Conor would get hives after helping to make french toast.....ooopppsss). I of course do not remember what I did to prepare, and what I need to do now yikes....

We are flying on United for the main trip across the pond, and also connecting to Aer Lingus and from my general research they both appear not to serve little bags of peanuts to all of their passengers in a snack time flurry. They also do not cover their web site with pictures of peanuts, and dress up as a peanut easter bunny too, so that makes me happy. For more on Southwest, an airline that does have a web site covered with pictures of peanuts, and dresses up as a peanut Easter bunny look here and here.

As you have probably guessed, my next few weeks will be filled with posts of preparation for our international air travel with three little people, food allergies, and asthma. I have just started my research, and FAAN is the first good resource I have found so far for general info. The FAAN Airline information page is here.

If anyone knows of any other good information sites or information in general, please let me know. I need all the help I can get......

Good By No Pair - Embracing Change

So, the No Pair has officially vacated the house, and after a rousing game of name that mental illness (borderline personality disorder), we are officially ready to move on to our au pair less life. Since Conor is going to kindergarten in the fall, and we have alot of resources locally, we decided that we no longer needed an au pair anymore. Although we had two that were absolutely wonderful, the bad ones really take it out of you, and I am tired of dealing with a teenager in addition to my three little ones.

I have spent my past week or so frantically trying to re-arrange our schedule to have some sort of child care accommodations. While this is difficult already, there are many more challenges when you have a child with life threatening food allergies, severe cat allergies, many enviormental allergies and asthma. There is one wonderful woman near my house that picks up at the local elementary school and will take Michael and Natalie one day a week. I was all set up to send Conor one morning a week also, and she was ready to try and accommodate his food allergies, when I made the very unfortunate discovery that she has cats. .....Check that one off the list.

But you know, we are muddling through...... I am so thankful to have found the nut free school where Conor will go to kindergarten. He can stay later on the days he goes there, and they have a wonderful summer camp he can also attend. I found a local woman who is older, has a grown daughter with asthma, and is very responsible to help watch the kids on occasion. We joined a gym that has a safe child care everyone can go to.

At first I was frightened and scared about what we were going to do, and how this change was going to effect us. Then Mick and I sat down, and really talked about it. What I was really afraid of was not having new child care options, but the change itself. When we first discovered Conor was allergic to peanuts, it was a shock out of the blue that changed our lives in that very instant. This was also a shock, but I think in a good way. We as a family were able to sit down and re-evaluate what we want from each other and our time together. We were able to use this upheaval in our day to day lives as a way to communicate with the children about how much we love them and how important our family is to us. We were able to address our fear of change and embrace it. Fortunately or unfortunately change is an inevitable part of life. I guess I need to change the way I view change.

From Au Pair to No Pair

So, I think we have finally recovered from all our illnesses. While there is still some hacking, heaving and nose running, I think we finally have everything under control and are ready to get back to life.

Or so I thought.....

I had previously written long long ago that we were getting a new au pair from Colombia. We had 2 previous au pairs that were absolutely wonderful, and one that was absolutely crazy. I had not written about our now No Pair much since I knew she knew of this blog, but now....oh well, here goes...

On Monday night she came to me and said she needed to talk to me after the children went to bed. Uh Oh, already a trouble sign. We had all sorts of interesting interactions with her, and occasional interesting behavior, but she was great with the kids, and always ready and always able to show up on time when needed, and seemed responsible, so we just kind of watched it. So this past Monday she sat me down and told me that although she loved the children and the job, she just was not comfortable being around us, and had to leave as soon as possible. After numerous conversations with the area coordinator, and her, she packed up her bags, and ran out the door early Thursday morning, never to be seen or heard from again.

So, this is kind of annoying. Just a bit. Well, ok alot. It is not like I will horribly miss her, but the kids are a bit upset, and I need a week or so to figure out our situation. After a few more days we decided that we are officially done with the au pair program, since we have lots of resources locally, and Conor will be heading to kindergarten in the fall. There were a variety of other factors that went into this decision, including the way the company handles your ability to interview prior host families of in country au pairs, and the fact that we would like our house back to ourselves.

So, I have been running around like crazy trying to figure out what our schedule will be for next week, and what my needs are. This is of course further complicated by all of Conor's allergies. Not only is the peanut allergy a big problem, but he is also severely allergic to cats, and can not go anywhere cats may be.

So, a new saga in our life begins......Lets call this the No Pair chapter.

Being Sick Sucks Lollipops!!!!

I can not believe it has been almost an entire week since I last posted.Wow, time flies when you are sick. First Conor was sick, and when Conor gets sick any schedule, organization, or rest goes out the window. We get to hang out with our good friend Plain Old Brown Nebulizer 3-4 times a day. Sometimes I think I should just name the darn thing, we spend so much time with it. Lets see, 3 times a day average, 15-20 minutes at a time - wow, that is about an hour a day with Mr. Nebulizer. 7 hours a week, 28 hours a month...yikes!!!

Things I wish I did for 7 hours a week

exercise

take naps

get massages

watch tv

read

meditate

breath deeply

breath quickly

listen to the quiet in my house

compliment my children for getting along so well

eat

blog

play on the Internet

play off the Internet

walking the dog

petting the dog

acknowledging the dog's existence

eating lollipops

go for a walk in the park

Then of course after spending countless nights up with Conor coughing in my face, I too caught some evil illness that left me sniffling, sneezing and coughing for over a week. Thankfully I do not have asthma, but it was (and still is) not lots of fun. Then we had a few bouts of vomiting in cars from other folks, a cool nosebleed, and a fun trip to our favorite Doctor to round out our week. (aren't you glad you decided to come over here and read this????)

So, I am off to tend to some more sick people. Maybe I will even tend to myself a bit.....:)

Peanut Free T-Ball Anyone....

You know spring is here when it is baseball season. In our house, Michael and Conor have just started practice for their first ever T-Ball season. We went to our first practice, and I have to say, it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

One of the main parts of the first practice was to show everyone how to run around the bases.......in the correct order. Now this seems simple, but for ten 4-5 year olds, it is not quite as simple as it seems. In fact it is pretty darn complicated. You have to go around the bases in a counter clockwise motion, after you hit the ball, in numerical order. You need to step on all the bases as you run around them, not fall over, or run into anything or anyone in your path. Finally you must tag home plate, and STOP there, not continue running around as fast as you can all over the place screaming home run at the top of your lungs.

Then, of course there is fielding. Getting the concept across that little children must pay attention seems awfully difficult. Thus, it is necessary to take part in important drills like outfield flower bouquet creation, hat styling, and gardening. These activities take paramount importance in an outfielders time, even if one of those annoying balls seems to get in the way by coming by every once in a while.

Overall the practice went great. Our coach is great with kids, and a realist, claiming, we were off to a great start. According to him, his job, and our job was the equivalent of herding cats, and we ended the day with no scratches or bites. There was a bit of howling and whining, but I think that was par for the course. Our first game is next weekend, and I can not wait to see how that goes...

With T-Ball starting, our little sports fans have started to express an interest in watching Baseball on TV, and maybe even seeing a real baseball game in person. With a peanut allergy unfortunately, this is not so easy. The totally awesome blogger Jennifer over at Food Allergy Buzz has started a blog Peanutfreebaseball.com where she is putting all the information she has found about peanut free baseball games around the country. This is such a great resource, and I am hoping to see some San Francisco area games listed there soon.

In the meantime, I am making sure all the local T-Ball games are peanut free just in case you want to check them out in person.