Summers Stories: Why My Son Wants Me to Throw Away All Our Bacon

Last Thursday I left for work again, arriving home on Monday morning.

Have I mentioned lately that I am tired of going to work? It’s just exhausting.

The good news is that February’s work schedule looks a lot better overall; it’s still a little grueling the first week of the month, but after that it improves considerably!

Hopefully next month will be easier on me and my family, especially since Darrel will no longer be on pager duty and can pick up more slack around the house. Yay, for helpful husbands!

Anyway, my flight landed at 9:30 a.m., and I had to change clothes in the airport, drive to Darrel’s office, change out cars (and luggage) there, then drive to the speech therapy office to meet up with my parents and the boys.

I hate going to work, but I love walking up to my boys after I’ve been gone for a few days. Their faces just light up with happiness to see me! What can I say? It makes me feel loved.

Poor Jed had a rough week last week and a rough weekend the entire time I was gone.

He had the Meanies non-stop.

Last week it was due to, we believe, some spaghetti sauce (now I know I can’t make extras to freeze and reheat), and this weekend I suspect it was the supposedly safe bacon he ate constantly.

I don’t know if his body has changed and he can no longer tolerate the bacon, if the ingredients changed in the bacon, or if he was always sensitive to bacon but we couldn’t note the reactions until we got his fructose bucket emptied enough that the reaction was obvious.

Whatever the case, though, it’s my biggest suspect so far. (We don’t know for certain; it’s just an educated guess at this point based on his diet over the weekend.)

So Jed was still a little out of sorts when I got home.

Zac, on the other hand, was almost like an entirely new child when he finally came out of his therapy session to see me!

He is talking SO MUCH more!

Yesterday he said every single word Miss K wanted him to say, and mimicked every animal sound she asked him to make. That’s huge! It’s the first time he’s made all his animal sounds!

From my perspective, though, I’m just amazed at how much he’s using his voice.

Even a week ago, Zac was still mostly silent.

Most toddlers are noise machines; constant babbles, words, and nonsensical noises emanate from their mouths almost non-stop.

Zac was almost mute in comparison.

He said his few words, and did lots of grunts and “uh-huh” and “uhn-uhn” sounds, but otherwise went through his entire existence almost completely silent.

Yesterday, I witnessed a new approach to life.

He made noise just for the sake of making noise! He exclaimed “Oh, Wow!” when he saw something he liked. He ran around, grinning, just going “ba ba ba bo bo bo be be be”.

And when I asked him? He made all his animal sounds for me and said any word I asked him to say.

Later on, we were in a bit of a pickle. I had promised the boys we would go to Barnes & Noble to play with the trains, but our errand running in town ran longer than I had expected.

Zac was hungry and I had no food for him in the car.

So I left the decision up to him.

“Zac, would you rather go home and eat or go play with trains first and then go home to eat?”

Without missing a beat, he shouted “Hoe!” Which meant “home”, of course.

I almost cried, y’all. At 2 1/2 years old, my son is finally starting to communicate with me.

(He’s very communicative using gestures and other bodily motions, but this is so much clearer and easier.)

We went home, of course.

A couple of other interesting things happened yesterday during our “running around town” time, too.

Jed had orientation at a local Martial Arts studio. I picked martial arts for him as an activity because I hope it will help teach him self-discipline, self-control, and show him how to listen to his instructors.

Since we plan to homeschool, he needs those qualities to succeed.

We also hope he will make friends, finally, so we can actually have people to invite to birthday parties and such that will actually come!

The orientation was just a few minutes of basic kicking, bowing, standing at attention, and generally seeing if Jed could listen well enough to participate in class.

He did awesome!

I was really worried; coming off the Meanies, Jed isn’t typically very agreeable. When they got on the floor, though, he was 100% IN.

We have our first class tonight, and I hope he does as well in class as he did in orientation.

Jed and I also had an interesting chat yesterday.

He was telling me how the Meanies “got in his tummy” and it was so cute I just propped the video camera up to record what he was saying.

Then the conversation took a turn.

Here it is: why my son wants me to throw out all the bacon in our house.

This makes me proud and deeply sad at the same time.

Proud that he realizes his food makes him feel bad and wants to avoid that, and sad that he has ever felt so badly that he is willing to throw out bacon forever as a result.

A few more days and Jed will be back to normal.

Zac, meanwhile, is doing great! We hope to start a new food trial soon, though we have no idea what we plan to trial.

I’d really like another veggie, but Darrel is leaning towards trialing corn. As he says, that’s a veggie, and it would be nice to know corn is safe.

I agree; with Zac’s frequent “corn chip snatching” over the last 6 months with no reactions, I’ve wondered if it is possible he can tolerate straight corn while still being reactive to corn-derived ingredients. There are several FPIES kiddos who are in that rare, unfortunate camp, so it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

However, CORN. Corn scares me. Zac’s worst reactions have been to corn and corn-derived ingredients.

Well, we will make a decision soon. In the meantime, both boys gained weight this week, Zac is chattering like a jay-bird, and Jed is on the upswing. Add to it the better work schedule next month and Darrel’s handing over the pager, and things feel pretty hopeful in the Summers household right now.

---

What was your scariest food trial? Do you also feel happy and sad when your kids realize they can’t eat certain foods?