Sunday

Walker out of town
Skipped church

breakfast: gluten free Van's waffle & honey
PICKLES
lunch: Rudi's bread, Hormel natural turkey, swiss cheese, French's honey mustard, organic lemonaide
dinner (for Maggie's birthday): Daniel Wong's Healthy Kitchen lemon chicken: fried without the sauce, small amount of lo mein; two dumplings, water

I had left a jar of pickles on the counter to give to my brother and Ike got in them and ate all that was left. They have yellow dye in them - Ike was spazzy and bratty in the morning, he did okay at the Best Christmas Pageant Ever play, better than I thought he would - but toward the end got very loud and hyper and defiant. Damn pickles.

He got hungry at the play. They were selling cookies, but they all had TBHQ in them (a preservative made from crude oil that is banned on the Feingold) so I couldn't buy them. That ticked him off - I have got to get in the habit of always having some Annie's crackers or something in my purse. It is very inconvenient to not be able to buy stuff. 

His language is still increasing tho. More complex syntax - much more. I think I've heard 3 or 4 new vocab words just this weekend.

Frustrated - but now I have removed ALL bad food from the house. I thought I would be able to keep some banned food for Walker and I to eat (like pickles) - but now I know that won't work. It is SO NOT WORTH IT.

I feel like when your baby sleeps through the night one night and then starts waking up again. Psych!!!

So, starting from scratch tomorrow. Again. Hope it won't take too long for the dye to work out of his system.

Friday

Pretty good day. He ran errands with Walker and me this morning and played fine with the kids after school. More cool Lego creations. He is talking a lot more, more complex sentences.

I also wondered if this diet would help Maggie, who had some of the symptoms too. Today I noticed that she was just especially happy and cute. Bouncing and happy. I wonder?

Walker was off today before he headed for Austin. And Ike got some banned food.

I haven't gotten rid of everything yet - it is so hard to throw away or give away 'perfectly good' food. 

He had Kroger club crackers for lunch, which are not approved. I think that have BHT in them.

He also took a DanActive strawberry yogurt drink from the fridge. It contains strawberries, which are banned due to the salicylates,  and "natural ingredients" which are code for artificial crap.

He also took some unapproved rye bread from the Kroger bakery. 

I made myself a sandwich and left the pickles on the counter. Pickles are banned in stage one due to vinegar. When I wasn't looking, I heard Ike say, "mm mmm pickles." I ran to him and snatched two off his fork and threw them in the sink which resulted in pitiful crying. But he did eat one.

When I looked on the ingredients, it has
cucumbers - banned for salycylates
vinegar - banned
natural flavors - probably means MSG
polysorbate 80:  an emulsifier, "used in canned pickles to disperse flavoring and artificial coloring." Supposedly a safe but very complex chemical.
And - drumroll: Yellow #5 and Blue #1
We'll see what happens.