So after I said that I was going to try to return to doing more old-fashioned blogging, I found myself struggling to just DO it. It is HARD to break out of patterns of thinking and it feels foreign to just sit down and write a chatty post. I’ve become so accustomed to needing to have a BIG POINT and BIG TAKEAWAY that to write about this and that and the other thing feels odd.

But here we are.

So, chit chat from our life.

We in the midst of that transition from child to young lady when it comes to Christmas presents. Last year I thought it might be the last year that Caroline asked for and received toys for Christmas, but I was wrong. She’s so into My Little Pony right now that it showed up quite a bit on her Christmas list. Part of me didn’t want to spend money on toys that I don’t know how long she will play with, but the other part of me (that I embraced) realized that I wanted to enjoy buying toys one last Christmas and seeing the happy look on her face when she opens them and starts playing with them. Next Christmas she’ll be less than a year from a teenager. There is no point in rushing the process. I would share some of the things we’ve bought for her, but she does read my website from time to time so I’ll share after Christmas.

If you want to know why moms of kids with food allergies are slightly neurotic about food, here’s a story for you. It is said you basically have to read every ingredient list every time you buy a product, even if you’ve eaten it safely before. But it’s easy to get lax because it gets tiring to read everything. There is a brand called Enjoy Life that is always free of the Top 8 allergens so if you are avoiding the Top 8, it is always a safe brand. However. Many people who have food allergies (or EoE like me) also have to watch out for other ingredients. Anyway, Enjoy Life has these soft-baked chocolate chip cookies that you can buy in a box with big soft-baked chocolate chip cookies or in little travel packs. So you would think if you can eat one version you can eat the other, right? Wrong. They are not the same cookie. They have different ingredients. Even though they are the same cookie. So a mom shared recently that her daughter went anaphylactic when she ate the little cookies because they had changed one of the ingredients from white rice flour to brown rice flour and she didn’t realize it nor did the company warn people on the box. (Yes, this is why allergy moms are neurotic about ingredients and what their kids eat.) And she also mentioned that the ingredients are not the same. This is the kind of stuff that drives you CRAZY when you are dealing with food things. There is no such thing as a “safe” food all the time. It’s a real challenge.

I received some money for Christmas and decided to buy a portable DVD player I can use on my desk. I have a lot of favorite older series on DVD that I never watch because I generally don’t have or don’t take the time to sit down and watch something in the family room where we have the DVD player and TV. But with my online work, I do have a lot of mindless tasks that need to be done at my desk and I can enjoy watching a favorite DVD at the same time. Hopefully it will show up today. I’m looking forward to revisiting some favorites I haven’t watched in a number of years such as Due South, Monarch of the Glen, Christy, and even Little House on the Prairie. I probably haven’t gone through Little House since before Caroline was born. Now I’ll be watching the series from the perspective of a mom. (While I was writing this post, the DVD player arrived. It is SO LOUD when it spins the DVD it is going back. Very disappointed. Now I need to find something else. I bought this one based on all the glowing reviews, but the negative reviews were far more accurate.) (And while I was still writing this post, David and Caroline were out Christmas shopping so they looked for a different one for me. They looked a few places and found one at WalMart and I’m happy dancing to Due South now!)

Something else I’ve discovered that makes me super happy are flameless candles. In the past, I burned candles all the time but had to stop once I developed scent sensitivities. I’ve really missed it. This fall I found some pretty ones at Bed, Bath and Beyond that had autumn leaves embedded in the wax and a flickering LED candle inside so it looks so real. I loved having one on my desk while I was working! I found something similar for Christmas with the Pfalzgraff Winterberry candles at Meijer (kind of like these, but white instead of red) and am so happy I did! I have the middle sized one flickering on my desk right now. It’s so relaxing.

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