Overwhelmed

I guess it is pretty obvious that I haven't posted in a long time - a really long time. To be quite honest, I became so overwhelmed with life and everything that comes with life. Ok, a lot of it boils down to taking away The Princess's binky and her deciding to stop napping. She went from a very happy, fun-loving toddler to a very mean, ornery, stubborn (ok, she was that way before) and demanding toddler. I just couldn't keep up with everything (and still find the time to blog) and something had to give. So, I backed away from blogging for a bit until the dust settled.

We are now about 6 weeks post-binky and still haven't quite figured things out completely. We kind of have a system down now where The Princess gets to spend an hour (at least we try for that, but inevitably, she ends up banging on her door around 30 to 45 minutes in) in her room for "quiet time". Whether she takes a nap or not is her decision (and so far her decision is to not take a nap - ever! Until we get in the car and than she is out).  That "quiet time" gives me a few minutes to get things done. Anyway... there really is something called the terrible 2's! To make matters more fun, we are also in the middle of potty-training.

The Princess weathering the storms of life... with a spiderman umbrella, of course!

Switching gears a bit from the joys of having a toddler to the second reason I was feeling overwhelmed. If you have followed my blog since the beginning, you know that The Princess was diagnosed with an egg (and milk) allergy along with her allergies to peanuts and brazil nuts right before she turned 1.  We had her tested for additional allergies (and retested for her known allergies) when she turned 2. We learned that she had already outgrown the egg and milk allergies (and thankfully had not developed any new allergies). That knowledge obviously changed the way we had been cooking - since we were cooking without eggs. As the time went on, we were able to slowly work eggs into The Princess's diet, until now she can tolerate scrambled eggs - and actually really likes them.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to share recipes that I had either created or adapted to suit The Princess's allergies - one of the main ones being her egg allergy.  Once she outgrew her egg allergy, I still felt a sense of responsibility to continue to post "egg-less" recipes, yet we weren't eating that way at home. Most of the recipes I was making for my family, I felt I couldn't put on the blog because they contained eggs. As more time went on, I found that there were fewer and fewer recipes I felt were "blog-worthy". I found myself spending more and more time trying to create or adjust recipes just for the blog and less and less time with my kids.

In my month off of blogging, I have been wondering if I would/could keep the blog going and what type of recipes I would post if I did keep blogging.  I found myself thinking at times, "This would be a good recipe to post" and at other times enjoying not having to take pictures of everything I cooked. As of today,  I guess you could say I have decided to keep posting recipes. There is no guarantee they will be regular - that depends on The Princess and The Brother's sports schedules - and whether I have found time to cook some new and wonderful things.

As for what types of recipes?  I will post what we eat. So, to those who need egg-less recipes, I will post a tutorial in the near future on how to replace eggs in recipes so that you can easily change recipes yourself. Of course, all the recipes I post will be peanut (and brazil nut) free (and will have options if you need to avoid tree nuts - where possible). Since we have also been focusing on "clean-eating" in our house in the last year, that is the direction my blog will also take. I know that many may not share my views on the need to get rid of processed foods, additives, preservatives, artificial sweeteners and food colorings, but I hope I can share with you my passion on why I feel it is so important for our family... and for every family.

I will continue to share tips, tricks and information on navigating life with food allergies. And for those who are parenting children with food allergies or intolerances, I will share insights into the life of The Princess and the life of a mother of a child with food allergies. Since, lets face it, motherhood is hard enough and adding in the stress, anxiety and extra things a food allergy mother deals with makes it even harder.

I hope that you will still find recipes that work for you and your family and that you enjoy as much as we do. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and put up with my crazy life!

Jana