[caption id="attachment_1377" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="LOVE it. And can someone please explain to me how my baby is already 2 months old?"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_1378" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Merry Christmas from our home to yours! (and I totally just realized that the card is all non-religious-y. Hmm. I wish it said "This Christmas season," but oh well.)"]
[/caption]In other news, I'm feeling really overwhelmed and guilty about Elijah right now. We diagnosed his milk allergy last December, and at the time that was all he was showing symptoms of. It's not even a severe allergy, which I found to be really reassuring, because then I wasn't so afraid that he'd die if he was exposed to the little bits of undetected milk along the way. We still cut it out entirely, though, to keep the allergy from worsening. He hasn't grown out of it yet, but there's still much hope that he will (apparently 90% of kids DO outgrow it by the time they're 4.) I also felt comforted knowing that he was born with that allergy, because those allergies tend to be less severe than ones that develop over time.
Well, now we have a new allergy on our hands. It seems as though Elijah is allergic to tomatoes. We discovered this by him getting random hives that we couldn't explain, and then noticing that it was happening more and more frequently, especially after the use of ketchup, sweet and sour sauce, and Diana sauce. The common link between those three things? Tomato paste. Until this morning, we were hopeful that he was just allergic to some other, non-tomato ingredient, but then Matt rubbed a tomato on Elijah's cheek, and he started breaking out in hives almost instantaneously. It was bad. Like, worse than his milk allergy has ever been. Here's a photo of the reaction:
[caption id="attachment_1379" align="aligncenter" width="223" caption="Redness from where Matt rubbed ketchup on his cheek."]
[/caption]I'll be honest, I'm scared stiff. How is his reaction so bad now, when he didn't even react 1 year ago? 6 months ago, for that matter? Is it getting bad so fast that it'll soon be a fatal reaction, if he's exposed? Is he anaphylactic? Will this ever go away? Is he allergic to the other foods in that same food category, such as peppers and potatoes? Do you have any idea how much a tomato allergy cuts out? If he IS allergic to potatoes too, is it my fault that his allergy is so bad, because he loves to eat french fries when we're out and I buy fast food?
This sucks. Like, big time. It was pretty hard, getting used to a milk allergy, and we're still so constrained by it, even though we're no longer overwhelmed by it. But now? I almost feel like tomatoes are worse. No more pasta, no sauces to dip food in (seriously, it was our saving grace with this picky eater...) no soups (because 99% are either tomato or milk based...) and the worst of it all? Next to nothing we can buy for him when we go through a drive-through.
Now I'm being dramatic. I know there's still chicken noodle soup. And pasta with olive oil and pesto. There's still mustard and mayo and relish (I think...) and there's still onion rings and chicken nuggets. It just requires so much more thought, when it was already rather difficult to feed Elijah, he being a rather picky eater.
Anyway, I should finish this up. I was going to make meatloaf for dinner (although I just realized that Elijah can't even eat it! BAH!) but either way, we need to eat SOMETHING. So....yeah. Feeling like maybe it's canned tuna and crackers for dinner today.
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