Zac Is TWO

Saturday, my baby turned two. 

TWO, Y’ALL!

<sniff> I guess he’s not really a baby any more. <sniff sniff>

Anyway…

Last week I had to work, and while I was gone I left instructions with my Mom to continue putting the garlic oil in his ears. I’d only been gone one day when she reported that he’d been holding his ears a lot, and even pressing the side of his head on table tops.

So, from the road, I called his doctor and made an appointment.

Mom and Dad took Zac to the pediatrician, and surprise! No ear infection!

He did have a lot of fluids pressing on his eardrums, but no sign of an infection at all. Whew!

The doctor suspects it is either from his two year molars coming in, or from the teeth shifting in his head to allow the two year molars to come in. My little stinker apparently wouldn’t let her look in his mouth enough to see if the gums were swollen or not.

So, great news! No antibiotics needed, and we can continue with food trials!

I got home Friday evening and, after dinner and bath time, passed out cold for 12 hours. Work was exhausting!

Saturday morning, Darrel and I discussed our next food trial.

Frankly, strawberries really just freak me out. Darrel is apparently pretty unenthusiastic about them, too, because he never even suggested them. I’m sure they’d be a great pass, but they just scare me. And right now, even without an ear infection, I’m hesitant to give him any food that might “up” his histamine levels at the risk of turning that ear pressure IN to an infection.

Back to my short list, right?

Except that right there on the table was the first harvest of our basil plants.

And, Brown Thumb aside, I can grow the heck out of basil! That’s an item that I KNOW I can easily procure year round for Zac.

Basil is an anti-inflammatory food, and while not the most nutrient dense food on the planet, it does have plenty going for it.

But it’s not really a “fill you up” kind of food.

I’d already planned to go to the Farmer’s Market that day, so Darrel and I agreed: if we could find cauliflower, celery, or apricots at the Farmer’s Market, we’d go with that for the next food trial. If we couldn’t, Zac would get a basil trial!

I love the Farmer’s Market. So do the kids!

Tons of people bring their dogs to the Market, and every single puppy we encountered was friendly to kids. That means my boys were in “puppy doggy” heaven!

We could barely move for all the stopping to pet “puppy doggies”.

Almost every vegetable stand had big signs proclaiming “Pesticide-free”, “Non-GMO”, “Completely Organic”. 

Y’all, it was an FPIES/Real Food Mama’s idea of heaven!

And you know what? There was CAULIFLOWER. Lots and lots and LOTS of cauliflower!

So we scooped up 5 heads of cauliflower for a whopping $10. That’s cheaper than the “organic” stuff at the grocery store!

After the Market, we stopped at Carter’s to get Zac a new baseball hat. The child LOVES to wear hats, but he’d outgrown all the baby hats we had, and the others we had floating around the house were all too big still.

So the Birthday Boy got a new hat. He was SO happy! He kept patting his head and pointing to his hat, telling us to put it on him.

A stop at Home Depot for some garden necessities, a swing by the health food co-op, and we were on our way home.

That night Darrel did steaks on the grill for dinner. He also washed some cauliflower, sliced it, and put it in a foil pouch to grill.

It got a little burned, but that didn’t slow Zac down much at all!

He SCARFED the cauliflower down. 

We served him two florets and some Quinoa Egg Bread, and after he finished those two cauliflower florets he knocked the Quinoa Egg Bread off his plate onto the table and pointed at his plate, screaming “MA!”

We gave him two more florets.

He inhaled them.

Pointed to his plate and screamed.

We gave him three more florets, one that was the size of the other two.

This was when the burned bits started to bother him. He was working the cauliflower around in his mouth and pulling out bits of burned cauliflower. I was very impressed! Those are fabulous oral skills!

(I have a feeling he’ll be talking soon!)

I asked him if he’d like me to cut off the burned parts, and he said yes. Once I did, he started eating again…but quickly stopped and got a horrible look on his face. He started climbing down from the high chair but only made it halfway before he stopped and started crying.

While I was at work, he had become somewhat constipated. Unfortunately, right in the middle of eating his delicious cauliflower was when his little body decided it needed to “go”, and it gave him a great deal of pain.

He stood next to his chair, crying, tears streaming down his face, and wouldn’t let me hold him or even touch him. He was staring at me, almost begging me to “FIX THIS” with his eyes, but it hurt too bad for me to touch him.

Finally I got him to let me hold him, and he was tightening his body so much he was like a solid piece of wood in my arms.

It was agonizing.

I tried bicycling his legs, but that made him go from crying to screaming. Rubbing his tummy didn’t make things worse, but it didn’t seem to help.

Finally, I stripped us both down and ran a warm bath. After sitting in the warm water for about ten minutes, he was finally able to “go”.

He instantly stopped crying – and wanted to play in the water!

Um. EW. No way, kiddo!

Darrel got both boys in the shower then, and I proceeded to scrub the bathtub to death before joining them.

I’m willing to do whatever works, but…EW.

The next morning he woke up bright and early and ready for cauliflower. He ate 5 florets for breakfast and promptly had a perfect, no-screaming, completely normal poop.

We were very happy that things were going so well. Then naptime came.

I put him down at 11:30 a.m. He woke up crying for me at noon. I nursed him back down. He woke up crying for me at 12:45 p.m.

At 1:30 p.m., still laying next to him in bed, I finally succumbed to my own exhaustion and fell asleep.

Neither of us woke up until 4:30 p.m.!

I didn’t know what to make of that. A 5 hour, “can’t sleep without Mommy” nap is not normal for him.

However, at dinner he ate more cauliflower very happily, had another perfect poop, and everything else was normal. And he went to bed at bedtime with no struggles. So maybe he was just tired?

All I know is that the first two days of cauliflower have gone really well, so I’m hoping we’ve got another “egg” or “goat milk” pass on our hands!

What a fabulous Birthday present for my boy!

How was your weekend?