Nuts are NOT toys | a Momma Bear's plea

I believe in a mother’s instinct to protect her children; I belive that there are no limitations to the lengths a parent will go to ensure the safety of their child. Fortunately, for most of us, the moments when our Momma Bear must emerge are far and few between, however, when your child has a life-threatening allergy, the Momma Bear never gets a chance to hibernate.  When we discovered the boy was allergic to peanuts, we had to sort through out cupboards and reread the labels of products we’d been eating for years.

It’s difficult to decide where to draw the line with regard to the foods you allow your child to eat.  The allergist determined that the boy had no reaction to any other nuts, including tree nuts so we made the decision not to feed him, or keep in our home, any products that ‘may contain traces of peanuts’.  This is especially difficult for our family as many gluten-free products contain or are manufactured in facilities that process nuts. Fortuantely, as parents of an allergic child we are acutely aware of the food we buy and feed our children and our home is a location that we can control.

Public spaces on the other hand, can become a parent’s nightmare in a matter of moments.

Case and point, we were recently enjoying the summer weather at our local park with the boys; there is a fountain that drains down and around a small hill to a gate that traps the water, but can be released by the children. My boys, and almost all the other children, love to chase their ‘boats’ as they float down the river and open the gate.  We’ve seen ‘boats’ in a number of forms and on this particular day some older boys (probably around 7) were chasing leaves down the river.  Our boys were playing happily and the hubs and I were enjoying the peace and sunshine until suddenly the hubs noticed that the leaves had been replaced with nuts and shells.

We raced up to the boy and quickly explained to him that the other kids were playing with nuts and reminded him that he was very allergic.  We explained that we had to go home immediately because if he touched them, he might end up at the hospital. I felt awful cutting his playtime short so abruptly, and he was a upset for a few moments, but without doubt, keeping him safe is far more important than preventing a few tears of frustration.

As a parent, an aunt and a sister of individuals with life-threatening nut allergies, I know that I am hypersensitive and acutely aware of the presence of nuts in public places. For those of you who are not directly affected, its easy to forget that some people need not ingest their allergen in order to have an anaphylactic reaction. For my boy, touching a peanut butter sandwich crust resulted in two shots of epinephrine, a shot of steroids and a week of benadryl. I have a friend whose daughter had a reaction just from being in the vicinity of a peanut butter sandwich on a family outing.

If your child had a life-threatening allergy, how far would you go to keep him safe?

Nuts are a great source of nutrition for those that can ingest them and I wish that I could feed them to my children, but I can't.  If your child eats nuts, please take the time to teach them that nuts are not toys. If your children consume a snack that contains nuts in a public space, keep the snack localized and ensure you take a few moments and do a proper cleanup.  Simply washing hands, wiping tables, chairs or any other public items that may have been contaminated (even using just a baby wipe) can go a long way to keep an allergic child safe and healthy.

Please Momma Bear, won’t you help me protect my cubs?

Celiac Clinical Research Study

Although I follow a strict gluten-free diet, I am not a diagnosed celiac, and its unlikely that I ever will be.  If you however, have a confirmed (by biopsy) diagnosis of Celiac disease and have been on a gluten-free diet for a minimum of 12 months you may qualify to participate in a Celiac Disease Clinical Research Study.

Trials are taking place across the US and Canada, click the image below for more details.

Thanks to Living Without for bringing this to my attention. Have you checked out their recipes? I made this Gluten-Free Corn, Mango and Black Bean Salsa twice this month and it only arrived in my email box on July 12!

A little treat, Chapman's Sorbet | lactose free, gluten-free, peanut-nut free

The hubs and the boy went camping today and they probably won't be home until Tuesday, possibly Wednesday. Although I will miss my big boys, I'm super excited to have four days of one on one time (minus working of course) with my littlest man.

Now that I have him on his own, I'm trying to find special little moments that we can share, but it seems that even ordinary activities are a completely new experience when its just the baby.

I've been craving ice cream lately, so I was super excited to discover that Chapman's Sorbet can meet my entire family's allergy needs. I read the label over three times before I realized that the front label stated that it is lactose free, gluten free and peanut-nut free. Amazing, an allergen-friendly product that I can buy at my regular grocery store and at $7.50 for a 2L the price is comparable to ice cream.

Orange is not my favourite flavour and apparently I'm not the only one; there was exactly zero of the neopolatin flavour and an entire row of the orange. I obviously bought it anyway, the texture is great and it tastes delicious.

Seriously, I'm on my third (little) bowl since I bought it this afternoon. The baby wasn't exactly sure what he thought of it, but I sure had fun watching him test it out.

This post is not sponsored, all opinions are my own.

DIY Green Wall using a Pallet and Landscape Fabric

I've always wanted a green wall in my home and now I have this gorgeous garden propped up against my west facing chimney. We followed this awesome pallet garden tutorial, and although it was a little bit time consuming, it was actually pretty easy to make.

To make our skid garden, as the hubs likes to call it, we got the best looking pallet the hubs could find and stapled like crazy to attach landscape fabric to the back and sides.  Then we laid it down and filled it with almost 5 bags of topsoil.  We packed the plants in quite tightly, about 8 plants per row.

We watered it like crazy and left the pallet flat to give the plants a chance to get established in the soil.  After about two weeks we very carefully stood the pallet up and leaned it against the wall before attaching it with a metal hinge.

After that, all that's left to do is water, water, water and let mother nature do the rest!

Isn't it lovely?

Humility in Motherhood | Reflections

I remember a time when the thought of a fellow driver seeing me singing in my car was means for great embarrassment.  Clearly, that was in my life before children, because these days not only do I sing as I drive, at red lights I appease the boys' request that I 'sing Boom Boom Pow and dance with my elbows' and I don't care who sees it.

Motherhood naturally changes us; it makes us humble and it teaches us humility.

In some ways, I wish that I could have learned these lessons earlier in life; that I could have found a way to release myself of the constraint of potential embarrassment in my early twenties.  It seems ironic that the portion of my life that was solely devoted to my happiness, my joy and my goals was also the time when I spent too much time and energy worrying what other people thought.

Now that I'm a mother, I don't think twice about heading to the grocery store with greasy unwashed hair, spit-up on my shirt or dinner on my pants.  Instinctively, this feels like it might be a bad thing, but in actuality I believe it truly a reconnection with the innocence of childhood.  I knew that motherhood would change me and yet like so much else, this self-acceptance is a pleasant surprise.

Motherhood changes us all, how has it changed you?

Your stroller wants 'The Mommy Hook' | Review

If you have a stroller, you could benefit from a Mommy Hook. Seriously.

Quite simply its a large aluminium carabener with a rubber for easy carrying and to keep it from sliding when clipped onto a stroller, grocery cart, luggage or just about anything else you can think of.

Have you ever been out on a walk, realized that you needed to grab a few things at the grocery store only to realize too late that you had bought more than you could effectively stash in the stroller?  Sadly this has happened to me more than once, I've tried all sorts of methods to carry the extra groceries.  The top of the stroller canopy isn't strong enough, groceries draped over the handlebars require extra attention when starting, stopping, turning or when uncooperative children are the soup d'jour. The default option is worst of all; carrying the extra bag(s) while pushing a stroller chock full of groceries (and in my case 50lbs of children) back home. The only way I've found to conveniently carry the extra bags is to hang them on the Mommy Hook.

The Mommy Hook is also great for small jobs like holding my clutch and keeping my wallet, phone and keys within eyesight and reach at all times, or carrying multiple grocery bags at one time.

With a $10 price point this simple yet ingenious product is well worth the investment.  I've used mine on a regular basis for the last eight months and its shown literally no signs of wear. The packaging says 'The Must-Have Mommy Accessory' and over the past three years I have tried a lot of products; The Mommy Hook truly belongs in every Momma's tool kit.

I received The Mommy Hook for the purposes of this review, however all opinions are my own.

The Looneyspoons Collection | Cookbook Review & Giveaway

The Looneyspoons Collection (TLC) by Janet and Greta Podleski is hands down, my new favourite cookbook.  The first week I had it, I used it four days in a row, each time trying a new recipe.  After a few short months I have at least six new recipes in rotation to be cooked on a regular basis and tons more I can't wait to try.  If Janet and Greta look familiar, you may have seen them on their super fun TV show, Eat, Shrink and Be Merry.

Janet and Greta's recipes are flavourful, healthy and easy to make; many of them are naturally gluten-free and dairy-free or easily adapted with simple substitutions. More importantly, my kids seem to genuinely enjoy the recipes we've tried from TLC; if the kids are eating healthy food, I'm happy.

Although this book would surely knock any family out of a dinnertime rut, its equally suitable for a recent graduate learning to cook on their own.  In fact I used to run a community cooking program for youths on Friday nights using recipes from Janet and Greta's previous books Crazy Plates and Eat, Shrink and Be Merry, which they generously donated to the program.  Cooking tasty, healthy food brought those kids, and myself, such immense pride and I hope that many of them have carried the skills and confidence they learned in that kitchen, into the rest of their lives.

But I digress, TLC is truly a collection, it combines old favourites, like the 'Must Bake Carrot Cake: two-tiered spiced carrot cake', 'Burger, She Wrote: Teriyaki seasoned burgers for the barbeque', 'A Lotta Enchilada: Flavor-packed chicken, black bean and corn enchiladas', 'The Ladle in Red: Everyone's favourite classic beef chili' and more with a ton of new recipes that are just as tasty.

Some of my new favourites include 'Mulligatawnski: Southern Indian soup with curried chicken, apples and quinoa', 'Bananaberry Bombs: Moist banana-blueberry muffins with oats and flaxseed', 'The Sound of Muesli: A high-fibre breakfast blend of oats, yogurt and fresh fruit', 'Sticky Chicky: Baked chicken thighs in a sticky-sweet barbeque sauce" and of course the 'GRAINola Bars: chewy homemade granola bars with oats, flax pumpkins, cranberries, nuts and mini chocolate chips', the base recipe for my gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate cranberry granola bars.

My mouth is watering just thinking about all that delicious food. There are recipes in this book are for everyone and I would buy it for anyone.

Want to win your own copy of The Looneyspoons Collection, signed by Janet and Greta? Enter to win using the Rafflecopter after the jump.

And if you're looking for some instant gratification, Janet and Greta have some free recipes on their website and if you sign up for their newsletter you will get new recipes in your inbox.

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