Tuesday: cause I wasn't weird enough already

Breakfast: approved oatmeal, Horizon milk
snack: natural Cheetos
lunch: PBJ sandwich, saltines, pear, pineapple juice
snack at PALS: Clif kids bar
dinner: pb sandwich, Fritos, watermelon, banana, water

Ike woke up in a happy mood and I knew we'd have a good day today. Sure enough, when I picked him up his teacher said he did.

She also brought me an 'incident report' - one of those papers they have to fill out when your kid hits another kid. But guess what - Ike was the victim!!

I am pretty sure I am the only mom who ever did a fist pump and said YESSS! upon learning that their kid had gotten slapped by another kid at preschool.

Right afterward, she handed another piece of paper to the other mom. That mom looked very upset and said, "I just don't know what has gotten into her lately!" And I said, immediately:

I DO! I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT'S WRONG WITH HER! IT'S THE DYE! I BET SHE'S BEEN EATING CANDY CANES HUH? IT'S THE RED DYE! IT MAKES THEM CRAZY! REALLY!

All I got was a kind of weird look.

And this is the moment when I realized that I have, once again, trumped my own established level of weirdness.

• Being a Christian who actually believes the bible means what it says is pretty stinking weird, but I thought I could do weirder
• So then I had four kids in three years, which definitely qualified me for the Weird Olympics. But, we still weren't bringing home the gold...
• So we decided to adopt a kid from an orphanage in Africa. Now, that's weird. Ca-razy weird. But y'all...it doesn't stop there....
• Now I'm the bible thumper with four little kids who is adopting more from Africa of all places AND WHO GOES ON AND ON ABOUT THE FACT THAT ARTIFICIAL DYES AND ALL THAT STUFF MAKE KIDS ACT CRAZY!!
  

How much more of a freak can I become???

Really, the only thing left for me to do now is homeschool.

Anyway, all the aggression and bad behavior has left him - he is my sweet little Ikey, who is talking more and more. But he still cried so much today, like his little heart was broken. He didn't want to go to PALS, so he sobbed. Maggie took some stickers away from him, he sobbed. I told him I needed my iPhone back, he sobbed. I mentioned before he is not a crier, so this is odd.

It appears that the yellow #5 (I am assuming this is all the yellow, even though there is some blue #1 in pickles too) makes him a holy terror for the first 36 hours, and then he has PMS for at least another day.

{maybe I eat too much dye?}

Monday - stupid pickles

AM:
Breakfast: Nature's path maple nut oatmeal
Disposition: weepy meltdown when I wouldn't let him play with my iPhone. Easily distracted by tickles and kisses. Demanding, yelling at me when he doesn't get his way.

lunch: saltines & pb, annie's cheddar bunnies, grapefruit juice, carrots, Tribe hummus packs (not approved but seem okay)

Bad day at school. He spit, elbow jabbed other kids, and called out "stupid music" during music. Sigh. Refused to put his car seat on afterwards.

Spent another $260 at Kroger (sheesh) but I think I finally have enough food to last a while.  Envirokids PB cereal was on sale and it is the only new kind that Shep likes so I bought lots, also lots of their granola bars to keep on hand to prevent the Great Snack Meltdown of yesterday from occurring again.

We went to the playground after school. He hit a little boy, then refused to go to time out, then called the park stupid, so I made him come to the car with me. He had a complete screaming crying meltdown. This isn't normal for him - he's not usually a tantrum thrower. I rarely see tears from him, and there were many tears today.

So far, yellow dye #5 and maybe blue dye #1 --> aggression, crying, opposition, 'cursing' (stupid is like the d word for kids, right?)

Making ground turkey tacos with Fritos, avocados, lettuce, cheese, Horizon organic sour cream for dinner.

Gonna be hard to not have salsa....I think it might even be illegal in Texas to have tacos without salsa...but tomatoes are banned in stage 1.


I bought Jennie O's ground turkey, which is not approved, but it is all I can find. The 'natural flavorings' are not specifically listed, so I emailed them to ask what they are. 'Natural flavorings' is often (usually?) code for MSG.


Just realized that Ike can't have chili peppers - so he is getting cereal and bananas for dinner. Yea, we can have salsa!

I found this website where other parents discuss what happens when their kids have dye. One said:

Our son does a complete turn in behavior. He becomes defiant, violent (hitting, kicking, spitting,) cannot concentrate on an activity and extreme mood swings...from crying to laughing w/in a minute of each other. Punishment doesn't phase him. He'd sit in time-out all day and cry but as soon as he was out of time out it's back to the irrational behaviors then back in time-out...a vicious circle.

Sounds very familiar. 

Yellow #5 (tartrazine) & lupus

"Some environmental chemicals such as hydrazine and food dyes such as tartrazine may be environmental triggers of SLE (lupus) in susceptible people."

Our 7 year old daughter was diagnosed with probable lupus this past spring.

Please insert more cursing here.

Coal tar makes me cuss

Yellow #5 is in the pickles which seemed to make my kid act nutty today.

Yellow #5 (among other dyes) is made from coal tar.

So what exactly is coal tar?

Let's ask Wikipedia:

Coal tar is a brown or black liquid of extremely high viscosity, which smells of naphthalene and aromatic hydrocarbons. Coal tar is among the by-products when coal is carbonized to make coke or gasified to make coal gas. Coal tars are complex and variable mixtures of phenols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and heterocyclic compounds, about 200 substances in all. 

SO CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHY THE HELL THEY ARE PUTTING THIS IN FOOD????????????????

Yellow #5 (tartrazine) - Hyperactivity, cancer, and asthma, oh my

From Wikipedia:

Tartrazine appears to cause the most allergic and intolerance reactions of all the azo dyes, particularly among asthmatics and those with an aspirin intolerance. Symptoms from tartrazine sensitivity can occur by either ingestion or cutaneous exposure to a substance containing tartrazine. 

A variety of immunologic responses have been attributed to tartrazine ingestion, including anxiety, migraines, clinical depression, blurred vision, itching, general weakness, heatwaves, feeling of suffocation, purple skin patches, and sleep disturbance.


Certain people who are exposed to the dye experience symptoms of tartrazine sensitivity even at extremely small doses, some for periods up to 72 hours after exposure. In children, asthma attacks and hives have been claimed, as well as supposed links to thyroid tumors, chromosomal damage, and hyperactivity.

The use of tartrazine was banned in Norway , and was also banned in Austria  and Germany until the ban was overturned by a European Union directive. The United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency in April 2008 called for a voluntary phase-out of tartrazine, along with five other colorings, due to a reported link with hyperactivity in children.



From  diet-studies.com:


Controlled Trial of Oligoantigenic Treatment in the Hyperkinetic Syndrome, Egger J, et al, The Lancet March 9, 1985    MedLine || Full Text
"76 selected overactive children were treated with an oligoantigenic diet. 62 improved, and a normal range of behaviour was achieved in 21 of these. Other symptoms such as headaches, abdominal pain, and fits, also often improved…. Artificial colorants (Yellow No. 5) and preservatives were the commonest provoking substances, but no child was sensitive to these alone." 


Assessment of chemical factors in relation to child hyperactivity. Ward NI, Journal of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine (Abingdon); 7 (4). 1997. 333-342.   MedLine || Full Text


"...Only hyperactive children showed a significant reduction in blood serum zinc levels and an increase in urinary zinc output following the consumption of E102 [tartrazine] and E110 [sunset yellow]. . . For the 23 children who consumed a tartrazine beverage there were increased levels of overactivity (n = 18 children), aggressive (n = 16) and/or violent (n = 4) activity, poor speech (n = 2), poor coordination (n = 12), and the development of asthma and/or eczema (n = 8). Most of these were severe or moderate changes. Only one control child showed minor behavioural responses to tartrazine."

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.