Monster Box

It is bound to be a spooky night. My Eli is going actual door-to-door trick-or-treating in the neighborhood for the first time. Why is he going for the first time at the age of 6? Well there are many reasons for this. For one, he didn't care for many years, nor would be be able to get him to do it if we tried. Last year we let him trick-or-treat in more controlled conditions where we could control what he got. By that time he could even say, "Trick-or-Treat!" (His medically required diet takes all Halloween candy off the 'OK' list.)

This year when my friends ask me if we are going trick-or-treating with that concerned look, I tell them about the Monster Box. He is new to our family this season, and has been a great success through a recent Halloween Carnival and also an "Angry Birds" birthday party just last weekend. It works like this: Eli goes Trick-or-Treating, (or in the case of the BD party, pinata smashing,) and keeps his candy and brings it home. Right when he gets home, he wants to do the Monster Box.

The Monster Box is a "Cars" shoebox from the shoes we bought for him to start the school year with, and it is full of stuff, like dried papaya and pineapple, dimes, quarters, Phineas and Ferb temporary tattoos, crazy drinking straws, gluten free animal cookies, (and other little sugary treats the the box carries limited quantities of.)

There is an exchange system connected with this box. He looks at the "exchange rate paper" and hands me the one, two, or three pieces of candy he wants to trade for and what he would like for them. He keeps exchanging until his candy is gone and he has a pile of goodies that are "special medical diet friendly." It works like a charm. He is excited to get candy, and I don't have to worry about him eating it. LOVE it! Happy Halloween everyone!

The Cost of Biochemical Intervention

I remember the day that I first picked up "Changing the World of Autism" By Dr. Bryan Jepson, and the way that it made me feel. I ate that book up, and I felt it was a gift from my kind Heavenly Father to help us help Eli. And those feelings of gratitude and conviction were what we needed, because we found that biochemical intervention is taxing on parents on many levels, and just let me say that we were not well off. We were still getting Daddy through college at the time we started the program.

Just afew short years later, our lives are so different. Meltdowns are an extremely rare thing, and our boy talks in a communicative way. And man, can he read. I am positive I could not read that well until late first grade, and he is still in kindergarten. We have been blessed with a teaching job for Eli's Daddy, and we are looking into buying our first little home. This purchase is a huge step for us, and so I have been reviewing our expenses, and where does our money go to. Our grocery budget is $150-$200 dollars a month more than we would otherwise spend if not doing special medical diets. I have a credit card that I put Eli's supplements on, and I hate seeing the balance occasionally go up some months rather than go down. However, when I review this part of our spending, I realize that we have always been blessed to be able to make it through, and there is no going back. He is so much more well and so much happier now.

All these thoughts really take me back to when I read "Mother Warriors" by Jenny McCarthy. It was on sale for $4 and we were curious, so we bought it. My husband said all it did for him was make him sad. It had some value for me as I saw the practical side of other parent's struggle to implement biochemical intervention, and their successes. The part of the book that really blew us away was the part that explained the average cost of raising a child with autism. Let's just say that the sum she offered as "average" was afew times our annual income.

So just let me say, you can do this on a modest income. We do.

Just as a side note, another cost of biochemical intervention is being weird. Yeah, basically to the medical community in general, I am a weird, misguided parent. I have already been lectured by a dentist about how 'it is better to err on the side of caution' when it comes to the decision of giving my son his artificial fluoride. And just recently I was given a "news flash" at a pregnancy check up about how 'in those recent news stories the research was fraud and vaccines really don't cause ADD and other things.' Well, I don't know about all of that, but seriously all I said was that I didn't want to give my child hep B at birth. Sheesh.

Pigs in a Blanket

This was an old childhood favorite of mine from when I was very young. My mother would chop hot dogs in half or thirds, wrap each little dog in a layer of biscuit dough, and bake. Often she would make the dough, and other times she would get it from one of those refrigerator popping cans, (those things used to startle me every time!)

Lately one of our favorite family dinners at home have been new and improved "Pigs in a Blanket," thanks to the lovely Linda at www.glutenfreehomemaker.com. Her wonderful blog has made feeding my family easier with her easy gluten free, dairy free recipes with natural ingredients. Here is her recipe for the dough to wrap the dogs. It has an awesome homemade taste, unlike refrigerator biscuits. Totally worth the effort. I wish I had taken a picture of our main entree tonight, but of course they always disappear too fast. (My five-year-old loves these!) Tonight we had our Pigs in a Blanket with Hunt's All Natural Ketchup, French's Mustard, Linda's Roasted Red Potatoes, and some green peas.

I have to admit, I have a thing against regular hot dogs. Even if there are those that are gluten free, I have a serious thing against the nitrates that are often in them, and I always, always avoid feeding my family nitrates. At our local health food store called "Good Earth," they carry nitrate-free chicken hot dogs. They are called "Sheldon's Cooked Uncured Chicken Franks." They are all natural, and as such need to be kept frozen until use. They make the best "pigs" we have had so far. I will be on the lookout for other brands of nitrate-free piggies to try out in the future.