Milk and Dyes

Recently I have learned something about my littlest Zeke. He is 3 years old and he is HYPER....that is not what I learned, I already knew that. Anyone who has met him will agree, he is a sweet kid, but extremely hyper. He is the kid that scaled the crib, climbed the windowsills, jumps down the stairs. About a year ago I realized that dyes in his food especially red40 exacerbated his symptoms, he would eat jello and then roll around on the floor back and forth, jump on couches.......So we quickly removed as many dyes as we could from his diet. Which is surprisingly hard to do! There are dyes in EVERYTHING!!! Its actually quite concerning when you stop and look at how many dyes we put into our bodies and our kids bodies. So moving on he still was hyper and as he gets bigger it becomes more of a problem (did I mention he is in the 90% for height and he at 3 wears a size 12 shoe!) So recently I read that milk allergies can cause hyperness. So I decided to experiment and took him off milk for a few days.......it was crazy how much more calm and focused he was. I gave him some milk one day to test and he soon after was back to wild. So we are trying now to take most of the milk out of his diet for awhile and see what happens. We also learned last year that AJ has a pretty bad lactose intolerance. So we have been trying to find lots of milk free, dye free foods........Again most of what we eat had milk or dye! So over the next few months I am going to try to transition to cooking most of our own foods, sandwich breads, snacks, cereal........ Not sure how it will go as I am great at the planning and not always great at the follow through. So now I will be mom, teacher and allergy sensitive cook :)

Remembering 9/11

I remember I just walked into the house from a doctor's appointment. Alex was 3 and AJ was 1. I put my things down and flipped on the Today show, just in time to see the first plane hit the towers. I was stunned, thought at first it was just a bad accident. We were living in the northern part of Connecticut at the time and Randy was working in Boston. As details emerged that it was a terrorist attack I tried calling everyone, but our line kept saying all circuits were busy. I was so afraid! The whole thing seemed impossible. I never felt such a pride to be an American, I was never so thankful to know that I knew Jesus in a personal way. I cried overtime I saw firefighters in parades. I watched the attempt of terrorists to take away my faith in both my country and my God and yet for the first time I was putting flags up everywhere, I wasn't missing a moment of church, I was learning what it meant to be blessed and how to pray for others who were hurting. It made me appreciate our country in a way I couldn't express, that is life for so many who face terrorist attacks daily. Today I stand with all the people expressing my sympathy for those who lost a loved one on 9/11. I also stand to say today is the day to ask Jesus to be your savior, we don't know what tomorrow brings so please do not wait.