Wednesday, August 20, 2008

A Celebration of Omnivory

This week DS turned four months old, which is when most kids get over the food sensitivities that contribute to colic. My DS was sensitive to dairy and soy in my diet, so I cut them out when he was a few weeks old. I also never reintroduced chocolate or citrus after starting my elimination diet.

But this week, I brought them all back, and he's doing great! Yippeee! I got back chocolate, orange juice, ruby grapefruit, Mexican food, Indian food, goat cheese, soy milk (I make my own at home -- soymilk maker, anyone? -- and use the bean pulp to make awesome, fluffy homemade bread)... so many things! I'm loving it. I get to be an omnivore again. (Okay, still not eating beef, hydrogenated oils, or most fish, but those were already off the menu for their own reasons.)

The funny thing is, I wasn't missing this stuff that much for its own sake. It's actually possible for me to live happily without cheese! Who knew?! The hard part was that anytime I went out to eat or ate food provided by someone else (potlucks, parties, etc.), I had to grill them about the ingredients. Do you know how hard it is to get restaurant food without dairy or soy? Oy vay! So, socially speaking, my life just got a lot easier. And less expensive, since I can stop buying packaged rice milk and bread.

Also, I can go back to having more vegetarian meals, now that dairy and soy protein sources are both available to me. Legumes would normally have been a fallback for me, but unfortunately, the food components that make most people gassy also get into breast milk, so DS suffered when my bean intake became significant.

Now that I've made my first post-colic batch of soy milk, maybe I'll continue the celebration by learning to make my own cheese.

Knitting? Spinning? Mostly casualties of the Olympics, which I'm watching in bits and pieces online. Though now that my giant-size DS has outgrown his infant car seat (You know, the one that's supposed to be good until they're 6 months old? And he's 4 months?), which we could bring into the house if he fell asleep in the car, I'm carrying my sock knitting in the car for those times when he falls asleep and I have time to just park in the shade and knit. Unfortunately, when I finished my first sock, I tried to graft off K2, P2 rib from memory instead of looking it up. Now I'll have to take it out and do it over, 'cause that sock is not stretchy enough to make it over my heel. Feh. But you know, making my own cheese would totally make up for it. :)

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