Please Don't Feed the Animal!

Yay! Yay! My house is clean (mostly)! Lately, I've been so bogged down in Christmas shopping, Ezra's allergy appointment and shopping to replace all of the contaminated food, and just general laziness that my house had become quite a mess. We had gotten to the point that we were almost making foot trails from one room to the next :P. While I hate to clean, it drives me absolutely insane to have my house dirty (that one I can definitely blame on my clean-freak mother). I noticed I'd been particularly irritable and unmotivated lately and I knew that the mess was to blame. So, yesterday afternoon I called Spencer up and told him that as soon as he got home from work we'd be cleaning the house from top to bottom (that way I'd be held accountable for my decision). Because I have a fabulous husband he didn't even hesitate to help me clean. Honestly, a lot of the mess was just picking things up, but that's what often overwhelms me. If I can just have the house picked up and looking presentable, then I'm a lot more motivated to do the laundry and scrub the bathroom. Anyway, we worked our tails off for a few hours last night and then rewarded ourselves with watching the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Cleaning wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it was going to be, but then again, it rarely is.

On the allergy front, things are going pretty ok. We're looking into alternatives to your typical dairy foods and things are looking promising. We've discovered a small section of health foods in a local grocery store. It had a non-dairy pizza that, despite the spinach topping, was pretty decent. I'd still take regular pizza over it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Ezra wouldn't eat any because he's used to his pizza looking different since we usually just take the cheese off of the pizza for him. As that isn't an option, we'll probably just make our own and make it sauce-heavy so he recognizes it. We also picked up some soy yogurt that Ezra could eat that was very convincing, some dairy-free blueberry waffles, and some tofutti cheese slices that we have yet to try. There's also a couple of small health foods stores in town that I still need to check out too. There's a big health food supermarket in Oklahoma City that I know carries some fun non-dairy foods like chocolate chips and mac and cheese, so the next time we head down, we'll have to stop by. Now that my house is "safe," I'm in the process of slowing making the rest of the world safe too (isn't that the mission of all mothers:). As we spend a lot of time at my mom's house, she's working on moving unsafe food higher up in her pantry and I'm supplying her with safe things for Ezra to eat (uncontaminated chicken nuggets, some Soy Dream ice cream, etc.) so that I can go there without having to pack a lunch first. I'm still pretty worried about other people feeding him food at Church parties, nursery, etc. I've discussed it with his nursery, but I think that I'll have to ban them from giving him anything (even if they've made it w/out dairy) just b/c I won't know if anything else they've put in it is contaminated. I've considered pinning a sign on him that says, "Please Don't Feed the Animal!" (teehehe) and I'll probably get him a medicalert bracelet too. If anyone has any other ideas, feel free to pass them on. Thanks for listening to me rant...have a fabulous day!