oh poor bloggie...

I've been pretty absent around these parts, and for that, I'm sorry.  I have lots to tell you.  Instead of a long winded post, I will give you bullet points:

• I'm not eating meat any more.  It's working out great!  It's been an excellent excuse to eat more protein in the form of crunchy Barney Butter.
• B's skin test came back worse than last year. Worse, in fact, than almost any other year.  Bigger and wider and even more itchier than ever.  My heart broke into a million pieces in the allergist's office.  Even though he is still optimistic about her outgrowing her allergy, I am resigning myself to the fact that she's probably not.  
• I devoured Sloane's new book over the course of an evening.  I didn't want it to end.  This is a book that belongs in every girls' hope chest.  It gave me an incredible amount of hope for my daughter and her journey through life with her allergy. Look for a review here soon (I promise, Sloane!)
• I'm going to the FAAN Conference in June in Anaheim.  Will you be there?
• I created a Facebook page for Peanut Free Mama - come and like me wontcha'?

I promise that I will have more content soon. I've wanted to hide under the covers when it comes to peanut allergy and all that comes along with it since B's last allergist visit. 

But now I'm ready to come out.

I hope you'll still have me.

Peanut Allergy: Doing Your Homework

Are you familiar with FAAN?

If you aren't, you should be.

FAAN is the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network.  In a nutshell (bah!):

The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) was established in 1991. Anne Muñoz-Furlong founded the organization after her daughter was diagnosed with milk and egg allergy as an infant. She discovered that information vital to raising a child with food allergies was not widely available.

When B was diagnosed, her Allergist gave me a slip of paper with his direct line (I know!) and their URL: www.foodallergy.org.  I walked out of the office overwhelmed, but armed with two amazing gifts.  Boy, am I glad I have both of those things.  Our allergist is an angel and I can't count the number of times I've gone to the FAAN site for help.

FAAN also holds conferences.  I'll be at the June 11th event in Anaheim.  It will be a chance to bond with other Food Allergy families, learn more about handling allergies day to day (as a parent or as an adult/teen dealing with allergies) and keeping up to date on the latest research.  I cannot wait! 

B will have just gotten out of school, so she's going to join me along with my husband.  When I mentioned there was an allergy conference happening she insisted that she wanted to go.  Unfortunately there isn't a kid's track, but I'm hoping she can at least come down and see a little of the action at the conference before I go in to sessions.

I told her it was in Anaheim.  She has NO IDEA what that means, specifically that a guy named Mickey Mouse lives nearby. 

She's gonna freak her freak. I love surprising that kid!!

If you're attending, please let me know so we can meet!  If there's enough of us, maybe I can set up a little meet and greet - it would be so awesome to put faces to the names that comment here :)

It is Really Happening + Food Blogher '09

It's been a busy few weeks for us here at Casa Peanut Free.

B and I jetted down to LA last week to help my mom recover from surgery on her rotator cuff. The Italian grandmother in me came out - the best way I knew how to take care of her was to make sure her fridge was stuffed to the gills with food! Since it's just my mom and dad, I made quite a few recipes out of this magazine - they were fantastic! Thankfully, she's recovering nicely and wont be starving any time soon.

Our visit down to LA including a flight there and back on United. It was really stress free I must say. We upgraded to Economy Plus for both legs (there and back) - those extra inches of legroom meant B wasn't kicking (errr, annoying!) the passenger in front of her. There were only drinks served (no snacks given out or for sale), so I really only had to keep an eye out for those around us eating peanuts. Thankfully we were flying midweek, which made for a flight full of mostly businessmen and women and they weren't packin' PBJ's. We did have a run-in with some apple juice (the apple juice won) and I hope the next passenger in seat 8A on the 11th was wearing rubber pants. That seat was pretty wet when we were done with it. Oh, and did I mention it was my fault, not B's? Let's keep that on the DL, shall we? :)

Anyhoo - where was I?

School! School's starting in a week and a half and I'm really sad about it. My baby girl is going to be in Kindergarten! While I was gone I got a really nice message from her principal wanting to set up a meeting next week so we can discuss B's plan and how we're going to make sure she has a safe learning environment this year. He also told me she wasn't going to be the only allergic kid in her class, which I found comforting in a way as well. What a relief that he left such a nice message - great start to things! So, today I'm putting together a list of all my questions - once I'm done I'll post it here. I'm really stressed out about it and I hope I don't forget anything. The biggest issue I think I'll have is that I don't think they currently keep epi's in the classroom. I'm gonna have to arm myself with some facts and figures from the scientific literature to help convince them otherwise. I'm trying my best, though, not to be in defensive mode the moment I walk in. I'll let you know how that goes too.

This has been rambling, and not very informative, but I wanted to let you know we're alive over here and peanut free things are going on!

Lastly, I'll be attending Food BlogHer here in San Francisco next month. Are any of you?? I know this isn't technically a food blog, but it does deal with food in a strange way so I'm hoping I can learn something. If you'll be there, let me know so we can chat!