Cooking for Max

When you have a child with life-threatening allergies, you learn to live differently.

And it is not easy.

My son is deathly allergic to peanuts.  But we have found that he reacts to even the touch of other nuts.  Very unfortunately, he also reacts strongly to sunflower seeds.  Not because of an allergy.  Just, most likely, because of the factory where they are processed.

Max is deathly allergic to the smell of peanuts in the air.

On our last airplane journey with him—returning home from Norway back to Poland—we were taking an airline where they offer no service except for paid service.  In other words, a really cheap airline.

The foods that they sell include foods with peanuts.

On the way to Norway, we did not notice anyone purchasing peanuts.  The flight was very uneventful.  And, believe it or not, when you live in Poland, a flight to Norway is also very short.

So our journey to Norway on the plane was great.

Upon return, however, immediately after the customers’ purchases, Max became swollen and red and leaned over to me as if to say, “I CAN’T BREATHE, MOMMA!”

My husband looked at him.  I looked at him.  We had no idea what was taking place when my husband sniffed the air and said, “I smell it.  Peanuts.”

I grabbed Max’s life-saving bag and ran him into the restroom where I basically spent the rest of the flight giving him medicine, watching his breathing counting down the seconds on the clock to the number 20===where I read once that if you make it 20 minutes after an allergy attack, then you can start to breathe easier.  Is this true?  I don’t know.  But when you are a mother to a child that may die due to food or air—it is really nice to have something to grasp.  ANYTHING to grasp.  Hope to grasp.

Poor airline.  Poor customers.  We felt horrible.  Here they just paid for their food and had to close their purchased items and wait to eat them until after the flight.

And, of course, we were scolded.  “We need to tell them AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FLIGHT!”

“Yes.  Of course.  We understand…”

Sigh.  Hanging our heads.  Hiding our son from the general crowd and air filtration system.  Living in the airplane bathroom with shame and fear and all of it wrapped up sometimes into frustration.  Frustration that you have to constantly helicopter your child.  Especially when air or touch can send him spiraling out of control.

And yet you love your child more than you love your very life—and so you hover on.

No one ever said parenting was easy.  Oh, and I should mention that Maxwell is treated as an asthmatic.  Hence breathing problems super serious to start (he is on 3 daily meds as it is).

But that’s not all.  Oh no.

Maxwell is also allergic to milk.  Not in quite the same death-way.  But in a way that also makes it very difficult to maneuver.

He welts at the touch of milk to his skin.  His swells if ingested.  He vomits.  And he has great difficulty breathing, too.

I guess one of the only big differences is that the smell of milk does not bother him.

My coffee is so grateful for that one!

And my husband—because my husband LOVES butter!  So do I.  And freshly whipped cream.  YUM!  And my daughter loves mint-chocolate chip ice cream.

Therefore, I think we are all a bit happy that Max can be air-exposed to milk.

Peanut butter was a hard one for our family to bid farewell.  You may judge and say, “Your child is more important.”

Listen, Peeps.  We laid peanut butter to rest—but it doesn’t mean that we still don’t crave it, okay?!

But having peanut butter in our home made us all live in constant fear.  And, thus, we banned our favorite food friend from our presence.  It was not an easy thing to do.

Anyhow…Cooking for Maxwell is a daily—multiple times a day—chore.  Every food prepared or every item purchased is scrutinized.  Foods are kept separated in the refrigerator.  And we have our 2-year-old son deathly afraid of new food.

And when people offer him food, he has known forever to say, “NO!”

Kids his age don’t understand and cheerfully try and try and try to give it to him.  This eventually sends him running into my arms.  And for that, I am simultaneously sad and grateful.  Sad that he must run.  Grateful that God has given him the fortitude to understand that his very life may depend on his actions.

And, as Maxwell nears 3, we all are getting better at Cooking For Max.

In fact, today, I was a Maxwell cooking machine.

Belgian Waffles for breakfast?  Yes, please and CHECK!

Coconut milk, rice milk, orange juice, banana, apple, and frozen strawberry smoothie to compliment breakfast?  Yes, please!  And check!  (No picture—it was devoured too quickly.  Oops.)

Depression chocolate cake for snack?

  

With freshly whipped chocolate-coconut whipped cream?  Yes, please and CHECK!

Fresh sopapillas for lunch?  And fresh toppings for it (beans, corn, salsa, and more)?  Yes, please.  And check!

And dinner?  Well, something Max friendly will come about—I am just not sure what.  Yet.

How do we do it?

We found the following items to be musts in our home:

Good olive oil.

Good coconut oil.

Fresh popping corn kernels as it is a very Max-friendly snack.

Rice milk.  Coconut milk.  Oat milk.  Max does not like soy milk.

A completely 100% milk free margarine.

Good chocolate that is 100% milk free.

And a huge separation of anything that may touch something he cannot eat.

We use more plates, spoons, and bowls than a small army—as we have to keep all things separated.  He cannot touch his sister’s milk or straw.

He can’t have her chocolate—he has his own.

He MUST ask before he eats anything.

Should I remind you all that he is only 2?  Two.

“It’s a hard-enough life for us kids!” Or is it hard-knocks life?

In any case, as Annie and the gang sing it—It is a hard life.  For all of us.

But we are slowly getting into a Maxwell-friendly system in our home.  We normally have 2 different meals at every 1 meal.  One meal that all 3 kids typically eat.  And one that Rich and I eat.

Jo and Max usually get the exact same foods and probably always will.  Josephine does not even know what cows milk tastes like.

Ada is 9.  So she gets to choose what she wants.  And she even made the choice herself to give up peanut butter—her favorite food ever.

And the internet gets used a lot to help us get creative as we try and cook and feed a kid that has had to grow up a picky eater.

We like cooking.  We like creativity.  We like desserts.

We are just all learning to like it the Max way.

That way we can enjoy life together.  The way it is meant to be.

Together.  Even at the dinner table.

***

Here are where I found today’s recipes.  And if it calls for non-Max friendly items, I just substitute them with his butter or his milk.  Usually you can’t even taste the difference.

Real Sopapillas:  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/real-sopapillas/

Coconut whipped cream:  http://tasty-yummies.com/2014/03/04/make-whipped-coconut-cream/

Depression-era chocolate cake:  http://www.sweetlittlebluebird.com/2013/03/tried-true-tuesday-crazy-cake-no-eggs.html

Best Belgian Waffle Recipe I have found yet:  http://www.food.com/recipe/the-bestest-belgian-waffles-63071

I forgot to feed my daughter. And we sent her to a counselor.

Living in a different country, in a village, where hardly any English is spoken is a bunch of fun. Especially when you forgot the differences of the beginning of the school year.

Things that are quite important like…

Oh, packing your daughter’s lunch for her.

You see. I forgot that they don’t start serving school lunches the first day of school. I even made sure to tell my husband, “Richard, make sure to go and pay for school lunches so Adelyne will have money on her account.”

So, Richard went to pay for lunches. The lunch lady said, “Oh, no worries. Pay by September 15th.”

And we thought, “Wow. What a relaxed country. How nice!”

Little did I remember (until well past lunch time) that they don’t serve school lunches that day.

AHHHH! Well, good thing I packed Adelyne a cookie to snack on. Oh, and Smarties because, after all, it was the first real day of school and I wanted to remind her to be a “Smarty”. Smarties are like M&Ms. Therefore, technically, she did have two things to eat. Both sugary. But I guess sugar worked well enough. She made it through the day 😉 And, yes, she came home HUNGRY.

To make it up to her, I had bought her favorite French pastries for her arrival home…apple! She was so happy to see them and devoured them quickly.

But forgetting her lunch was not all. Somehow, lost in translation, was the fact that she would need PE clothes to change in and out of.  She did, however, change her shoes from outside shoes to hallway shoes.

So, let me set this all straight:

She was the only student that did not have a lunch.

She also was the only student that did not change clothes after PE.

And she was the only student that DID change her shoes from outside shoes to hallway shoes back to outside shoes.

That’s it.  Three strikes.  We definitely struck out.

But in spirit and adventure and smiles, we still won.  Adelyne came home completely happy to have been at school and back amongst her friends in Poland.

Now for the counselor…

Before we returned to Poland, my husband and I were completely breathless, having near panic attacks, worried about Adelyne’s return to Poland.  After all, we had been living in the beautiful and glorious USA for the past year and a half.  That’s a very long time for a child.  Especially when you go from 1st grade to 3rd grade.  The maturity at 8 that was not there at 6 is astounding.  Her entire being is different now.  And school in Polish.  Eek!  The language is so difficult.

And, so, we, trying to be and ahead of the game parents, decided to set up a back-to-Poland counseling appointment.  Hoping that it would be 1 of 3 appointments.

We met with the counselor and spoke to her about our concerns and told her about Adelyne.  She was extremely perceptive.  Probably a great trait in a counselor, eh?  And we scheduled the time for her to meet one-on-one with the counselor.

Adelyne was told that she was going to meet a lady that she could share openly with her feelings about returning to Poland, or anything else that laid heavy on her heart.

She seemed okay with it.  So off we went.

Now, here’s the funny part, the lady that we sent Adelyne to is specifically a counselor for children.  She has toys and crafts and art supplies galore in her office so that the children can play and talk at the same time, keeping the atmosphere very safe for them.

Well, Adelyne decided to sit on the couch across from her and speak the entire time.  You see, Adelyne was an only child for 6 and 1/2 years.  And for that entire time, she has helped us build a foundation for the poor in Poland.  Meaning, she has spent the majority of her life in meetings or doing grown-up stuff.

The counselor was funny.  She said, “It’s the first time a child has sat on the couch the entire counseling session.  It made me a bit uncomfortable.”

Haha.  A piece of the counselor’s own medicine—being on the other side of the couch, eh?   (But I say that in respectful love because I truly believe greatly in good and Godly counseling and hold the utmost respect for the counselor herself)

Back to the counseling session.  Adelyne shared a lot.  The counselor after spoke with me about what was said and her advice on how Richard and I could help with the transition back to Poland.  Overall, it was a beautifully great and helpful session.

And with everything in my being, I had intended to take Adelyne in for 2 more sessions before our move back to Poland.

One session to address the difficulties Richard and I had in our marriage the past year that she was witness to.

The next how she felt when Maxwell was sick (Our son is a NICU and then later an ICU, blood transfusion, and coma survivor).

So, you see, there is a lot that a little 8 year old could share with a counselor.  And I had really wanted to get her back…

But life got in the way of my best intentions.  My husband was once again out of the country for a month.  I was packing and moving a house without him.  My daughter had daily dive lessons.  And I have 2 wee ones that were even wee-r at the time (if there is such a word).

All of this means we did not get back to the counselor despite my heart telling me it was so needed.

And then we went and did it.  Moved back to Poland.  And we began to settle back into our lives of living in a foreign country and all that entails (which is  lot on its own).

Happy, happy, happy has my daughter been.  And then it hit!

Bam!

Maxwell, our son, had a horrible allergic reaction to something.  His face swelled up, his eye was swelling closed, the red was creeping along his neck.

He looked horrible, felt horrible, and I began to panic.

Can he breathe?  What happened?  Did he touch something?  Did he eat something?

And then something even worse happened.

My daughter lost it.  She just sat there and cried and cried and cried.

I felt for her, but, at the moment, we had to take care of Maxwell (and the regime that comes with a horrible allergy attack) and then monitor him closely for about 20 minutes with our epi pens right next to us.  We were debating, do we call my brother, a fire captain and paramedic?  Do we call our brother-in-law, a doctor?  Do we call the Polish emergency number 1-1-2?  Do we ride it out?

Who knows if we made the best choice, but we made a choice that we felt was best.

And while Maxwell slowly started to improve, Adelyne started to dis-improve.  She melted.  Literally melted.

She climbed in my lap like a small child would and crumpled against my chest.  No matter how many times we tried to assure her that Maxwell was fine, she seemed unable to breathe peacefully.

And that’s when I got to the heart of her panic.

Laying flat against my chest with her legs curled up into my lap she said through her tears, “Do you know what it’s like to have your brother almost die on you?”

No.  She wasn’t talking about his allergy attack (as severe as it was), she was talking about when no one knew if Maxwell was going to live or die when he was a baby.

In the midst of something sad but not so extraordinary (although I don’t take allergic reactions lightly, especially with my nutty son), the past came back in a rush to my daughter, and I could tell the future will continue to hold a lot of healing.

And while we have epi pens for our son Maxwell, dealing with the heart of Adelyne may require a different kind of medicine.  Called time.  Love.  And lots of hugs.

Now, to end on a funny note.  As Adelyne was super sentimental about Maxwell’s horrible allergy reaction, she just wanted to cuddle her precious baby brother.

Max, on the other hand, kept kicking her away and tackling her and shouting, “Noooooo!”

Yes.  This did eventually make the waterworks worse.

But, truly, isn’t that what brothers are for?!