Flexi-Vegan-atarian

I know, it's a weird title...but here's the deal. We delayed giving K peanuts until she was almost three because she has a cousin with a peanut allergy (and that was the advice we'd read). Turns out she's allergic to peanuts, almonds, and Brazil nuts.

Over the last year, Ed and I have been on a journey to figure out some healthier ways to feed our family. I made all of L's baby food, then started to make yogurt. now I also make all of our bread. It was all about getting rid of the "junk" that's in food. We eat fruit at almost every meal (because we don't eat a lot of veggies and fruit is easy). In all of this, Ed has lost about 30 lbs (so proud of him)...some due to eating, but also working out almost daily.

Anyway, this year after some research I began thinking that K's nasal "stuffy-runnies" were due to a food allergy. Also she has pretty severe excema. I'd been reading that milk is a huge contributor to excema so after vacay I asked the pedi to test her for any other allergies. It came back that she was allergic to everything in our backyard (dogs, oak, bermuda grass) as well as milk and eggs. About a week later, we eliminated all dairy from her diet and replaced it with non dairy products as much as possible. Her skin cleared up and she's not all stuff/runny all the time!! This made me so happy. Now we did have a relapse last weekend when we had two parties in a row where K ate copious amounts of dairy. :( She was almost immediately back to where we started before getting rid of that in her diet. Bad momma!

So what is Flexa-vegan-atarian? Well, we learned about flexitarianism (mainly vegetarian diet with some lean meats added in) earlier this year and really like it. It's basically what we follow now. She needs to eat vegan for the dairy free aspects (although not for the cruelty to animals aspect, and she does eat meat). So tonight, after some research, I made up my own new word for the way we eat (which really equates to dairy-free, nut free....but I prefer to use my term).

We see the pedi again this week so we'll see what he says about her skin and nasal conditions after being off all of the dairy for about a month...I'm looking forward to learning more about healthier eating, but not looking forward to the higher grocery bill that comes with dairy free eating. Oh well, it's worth it to keep my baby girl from suffering so much.