Food Allergies Alert!

A recent post on getallergywise.blogspot.com reminded me again of how important it is to stay on top of Liam's food allergies. Yes. Is it confirmed. Liam does have some significant allergies that we need to be cautious of.

A while back, I wrote a post about food allergies as I pondered Liam's averse response to eating rice. His rice reaction remained consistent over numerous occasions of trying to feed my Asian boy some rice with no success. Over the course of the past 8 months, I cautiously introduced the standard mild, low allergic foods - peas, carrots, yams, green beans, bananas, apples, chicken, etc. Even then, Liam displayed signs of random sensitivity related to foods with a delayed 24-hour period reaction.

For his first birthday, he had a pumpkin muffin, and right after his face turned red. I didn't think much of it, but the next day, he had his first taste of cake. This time, his face swelled red immediately and a rash of red dots formed. Both instances screamed "egg". So, sure enough, when we saw the pediatrician, a suspicion of egg allergy was enough to warrant a visit to the allergist.

Ah.. the allergist... secretly, I was hoping we would get the referral. It has been difficult figuring out what to feed Liam because he would keep having reactions to foods. He has been living off of yams, bananas, and milk for most his 1+ year life as those were the only foods I could confidently deem safe.

So... the results... my little, sweet boy is pretty much allergic to EVERYTHING. Okay.. I'm exaggerating, but he is allergic to a lot of things and has sensitivities to a lot of things.

1) Peanuts
2) Eggs
3) Fish
4) Shrimp
5) Peas
6) Carrots
7) Green Beans
8) Kale
9) Avocado
10) Rice

He is allergic to items 1-4, and he is sensitive to items 5-10. 8-10 have not gone through allergy testing, but Liam's reactions/symptoms indicate a sensitivity. Anyhow, my boy cannot be vegetarian. He is a-okay, no reactions to meat, but seriously.. carrots, peas, and green beans! Carrots are in EVERYTHING. I realize now why his reactions in the past were seemingly random. I would cook things in vegetable broth.

2012 has been challenging to provide healthy and nutritious meals for the whole family. I spend way too much time trying to plan and figure out what to buy, what to cook, and then cook different dishes to accommodate everyone's eating habits. Between all of us whether it be allergies, or diet, or simply likes/dislikes of food, there is always one dish that someone can eat, as well as one dish that someone cannot eat. Hopefully now with an idea of Liam's allergies, 2013 will be easier in planning meals for the family!

Baby Food

I've been asked by several people about what I feed Emilia to eat at this stage. It has been interesting seeing her tastes grow and change from when we first started her on solids to now. There have been challenges along the way balancing nutrition and foods that she will eat. She still does not like too much texture or chunkiness, so still a lot of blending and fine dicing of foods. So, as documentation for Emilia to see later (and for me) here's a food post!

Emilia does not drink anything but room temperature water and 60% goat's milk with 40% 12-24 month Gerber baby formula (~12oz/day). No juice. For food, she still likes mainly mushy stuff that does not require too much chewing.. and seeing how she still only has 7 teeth, it makes sense. I try to make sure she always gets her carbs, protein, veggies, fruits, and dairy on a daily basis and with that, a lot of variety in what she eats. I think next to my full-time day job, my night job is being a baby food chef! Feels like I'm constantly cooking and experimenting with what she will eat.

For Breakfast:

Avocado, Banana, & Mango Puree (Or some variant)

Scrambled eggs with a dash of Shaoshing rice wine, finely diced tomatoes, little bit of cheddar cheese, and scallions:


I recently tried the Crock Pot Oatmeal, which is awesome because it is so easy to make! I make the base oatmeal and add a little cinnamon, brown sugar, and maple syrup, or fruit toppings, or a blend of pureed fruit. Now if only I can get Em to like it as much as it is easy to make! With the recipe, I would modify it by adding 1/2 cup more water and 1/2 cup more milk so that it does not come out so thick.



For Lunch/Dinner
Pureed Yams (with blended kale)
Blended kale is one of those things that I can throw into whichever recipe so that Em gets her leafy greens. It goes well with something that has a stronger flavor, such as with yams.


Rice porridge is a staple. I usually have frozen cubes of rice porridge for her as backup food. A recent rice porridge I made is cooked in chicken broth with green onion and ginger (only for flavor, removed after cooking) with finely diced soft tofu, egg, bok choy, and shitake mushrooms. In general, I have some kind of protein (either meat/tofu/egg) and some kind of leafy greens.



Red Quinoa cooked in chicken broth with mixed vegetables pieces (corn, carrot, green beans) mashed with potatoes and blended kale and blended ground turkey.



Mash potatoes with broccoli and sprinkle of cheddar cheese.



The most elaborate recipe so far has been a Baby Shepherd's Pie. This required cooking the various ingredients differently - boiling some, fry/sautee others, combining it all, and then baking. I modified the recipe and used ground turkey sauteed with garlic and onion, then add tomatoes, bag of mixed veggies (corn, carrots, green beans) and simmer. Then in a baking dish, I put the sauteed mixture as bottom layer, and then added the mashed potatoes and cauliflower on top. Sprinkled a little cheese on top for the baking portion. After all said and done, I was too tired to remember to take a photo of it!

Add-On Sides to any meal or Snacks:
Yo Baby! Yogurt

Organic, Unsweeten Apple Sauce

Steamed Carrot sticks

Yum-Yum Rice Crackers

HappyBellies Organic Puffs

String Cheese

Fruits - apples, grapes, blueberries, cherries, peach/nectarine, bananas, watermelon, apricot




Hawaiian Sweet Bread (not the healthiest, but on occasion. She loves this.)

Emilia's 1/2 Year Report Card

Hard to believe but Emilia is now at the 1/2 year mark. We just had her pediatrician checkup today, and she passed with flying colors (i.e. everything is normal). They took the usual measurements, and here's the data:

Length = 25.75" (48%)
Weight = 14 lb 4 oz (16%)
Head Circumference = 16.6" (41%)

So she's basically a long, skinny thing with a big head ;^)

We've been a little concerned that she wasn't eating enough, but she certainly doesn't look emaciated. Her weight gain has really leveled off; however, her eating recently took off again, and she's now eating what would be considered normal for her age. So maybe we'll see a little more chubbiness next month.

The big news this month is that Em has made the giant leap into the world of crawling. She's not a true mall crawler yet, but she does get mobile with sort of a hop and lunge technique. She seems really excited about this method of transport, and her eyes will light up when she sees something she wants and now knows how to get to it.

The other major development is her sitting prowess. She just learned to stay in a seated position by herself last month. During the course of this month, she has gotten really stable in this position, and has held it for up to 30 minutes. And now she's also able to plop down to the tripod position, and then crank herself back up into the sitting position.

There are some common baby developmental milestones that we've been tracking to ensure that Em is progressing as she should. So far she has mastered the first 3 major milestones: Head Control, Rolling, and Sitting. Next up are Crawling, Standing, and Walking. Over the next few months, we'll be working on: 1) a more effective crawling technique, and 2) getting her to stand up on her own with the aid of a support. I'm also working with her on a handstand, believe it or not. She's so strong that I look for ways to challenge her, and she seems to enjoy it. Of course, I'll help her to balance her legs, but she'll do the rest of the handstand herself. We're about 50% of the way there now.

Last month we said that the new adventure for this month would be solid foods. Well, it has been a little crazy to say the least. We started off with rice cereal, and that didn't go too bad as she started to get the hang of it in a couple of days. But then we upped the ante by introducing some veggies. First up was peas, and she made some weird faces as she reluctantly ate it. Feeding her solids is always a messy proposition as she does all of the following:

Spits it back out
Sucks her thumb
Moves her head just as you're about to put the spoon in her mouth
Puts her hand in her mouth of course with a mouthful of food in there
Grabs the food bowl
Sucks her thumb
Grabs the spoon
Sucks on your arm
Grabs your hair
Clutches her bib
Sucks her thumb

I don't know what we were thinking, but we decided to try giving her some avocado. It wasn't mixed with anything - just mashed up avocado. Since we live on an avocado farm, you have to like avocados, right?! Wrong!!! I guess for some of us, including me, it's an acquired taste.

More Em Trivia:

• I call her daycare "The Spa" because she is pampered there beyond belief. She gets soothing baths, massages, skin care, hairdos, dressed up, held a lot, played with whenever she wants. She has one-on-one attention from a woman who really knows and cares about babies. It's been a couple months now, and we're over the initial anxiety of leaving your baby with a complete stranger. We feel very fortunate to have found her.
• Em no longer comfort feeds when breastfeeding. It's straight on-and-off food time now, and she is done in 15 minutes. Momma misses the days of comfort feeding. Then again... maybe not. Em used to feed for 1.5 hours every 3-4 hours.
• One of the benefits of breastfeeding is that the poop doesn't smell so bad. But now that we've introduced solids, we've been brought back to the real world of stinky poop. Pehhh-ewhh!!! Time to get her diaper trained soon!
• She's a Pisces - she's suppose to love the water. So Em is now enrolled in Baby swim classes.
• Em is also nicknamed Archie. When she disagrees with something, she forcefully arches her back.
• We're reminded at times that Em is a caulbearer with special powers. I was entertaining her by flipping pages quickly on a random book. She stuck her hand out, and grabbed what I thought was a random page in the random book. I looked at it, and it was the "Amelia" page in the Baby Name book. Weird.
• Stranger anxiety. Yup, we believe she still has it. She tends to freak out when we hand her over to someone she doesn't know. But if she has met you before (even only once or twice) she seems to remember.
• Her voice seems to be changing again. She went through a phase last month of making these gutteral sounds. Now she seems to be back to a more normal voice - at least for now. Still no real words but lots of sounds.