Birthday Boy

My sweet little boy turned six this week! He was proud to put his own decoration and candle on his little cake.





He lost one of his front teeth the day before his birthday, which was also picture day at school as well. It was perfect! We have truly spoiled him this week with a dinner out, party with cake, and a trip to the nickle arcade, on top of all his gifts. :)

Although I always make him a gluten free cake, this one I took extra care to not only eliminate allergens, but to make it with real icing and piped borders. I still have kinks to work out. The icing was a delicious flavorful lemon. It was a different consistency than I was used to working with, so I felt that the icing job suffered. The cake tasted good, and was a mild lemon flavor. However, it was dense and had a different texture. This was my first gluten free cake that I actually tried to decorate though, so I am proud of my cake, but much more proud of my big birthday boy!

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.

Little Lifesaver in a Jar

I'm not talking about the candy. I'm talking about the little jar of stuff pictured above--- Ghee! This great stuff has been a lifesaver for me with my son's GF/CF diet.

I went to my local Good Earth store one day looking for this because it was the mysterious ingredient in some of the recipes in this book. One of the managers knew what and where it was... it ended up being clarified butter. I almost passed it up... butter is not ok on my son's diet. She explained that clarified means that all proteins are removed... meaning no casein is in it.

Why is this so great? Well, on top of GF/CF my son limits his own diet quite a bit. Margarine, even canola marg is out of the question. No one should eat hydrogenated fats. Bottom line is that this Ghee stuff helps my son accept some foods he normally wouldn't. I stir a teaspoon of it in his GF noodles with some steamed veggies and some salt. He won't eat spaghetti, but he will eat this. (I love it that I can get some veggies down him this way!) At $8 a jar it sure is not cheap, but this little jar has lasted a long time and has flavored many meals of pasta and vegetables and some of brown rice. :)