Evie's 2nd Birthday

Evie turned two last Wednesday! She visited the doctor on her birthday, and she's a healthy little girl. I'm also happy to say that we've reintroduced milk into her diet and she's doing really well with it. I guess it was a temporary lactose intolerance, so we're very thankful for that. Here are some pictures of my sweet birthday girl:

 Eating french toast for her birthday breakfast.

 Nate needed to be in the picture too!

 Opening her gift from Aunt Liza - a baby feeding and diapering kit. It's definitely the new favorite toy around here!

 Her baby went mysteriously missing when we opened the gift, so Teddy had to wear the bib and diaper and eat baby food!

 I made a teddy bear cake to match Evie's teddy bear. My creativity was running kind of low this birthday, but I was happy with how it turned out. And she loved it!

We had a small party for Evie Friday night, but we only have video from that. I made sure we got our picture taken together with the cake before the gang arrived!

Baby Blan #3

I'm pregnant! We've been telling our good news for almost a week now, but I've failed to post it here. Baby Blan #3 is due to arrive December 16th. And I can finally give my real reason for a recent lack of posts: fatigue and nausea. First trimester gifts! I guess baby #3 means three times the fun? But I'm almost 11 weeks now, so it should be ending soon.

The following picture is obviously not a recent one, but we've had a serious lack of picture taking lately. And I've been thinking about my big, round baby bellies, so this one came to mind. We were sitting next to the Bosphorus in Istanbul about a month before Nate arrived. Sweet memories.

Soy Cheese Doesn't Melt

One of the reasons I haven’t blogged much in the last few weeks is that I’ve had the extra task of figuring out what to feed my probably lactose intolerant/possibly dairy allergic daughter. We’ll visit a pediatric gastroenterologist on Thursday to try to get some answers.

Anyway, a couple months ago Evie had an awful stomach bug that completely wiped her out. But after she was over it she continued to have diarrhea, going through at least ten diapers a day. That continued for three or four weeks while I continued to talk to the doctor, giving stool samples for parasite analysis and to see if she had an intestinal infection.  Everything came back negative, so they finally told me to eliminate milk and anything containing milk from her diet.

When we returned from Kentucky three weeks ago I started her on a milk-free diet, and within three days she had normal bowel movements. So we’ve just been waiting for her doctor’s appointment (and you know you can’t see a doctor in a reasonable amount of time in America) to know what to do next.

Meanwhile, I’ve had what has been one of the most challenging tasks – to eliminate milk and cheese from Evie’s diet. Baking with soy milk (yuck!). Substituting oil for butter (isn’t butter a super food?). Fixing cheese-free meals. Enduring fits because I’ve tried not to alter Nate’s diet more than is necessary, so she doesn’t understand why he gets to eat cheese crackers and yogurt and she doesn’t. Eating out even less than our rare outing because I’m not yet up for figuring out what in the world doesn’t have milk in it, and then deciding what she might eat from that small selection. The list goes on.

So, to anyone out there who has experience with lactose intolerance, I’d love some advice! I’m still hoping this is a temporary thing, but until then I could seriously use some help. I’ll keep you posted.