HI, REMEMBER US??

This is going to be a long one.
You have been warned.
But TONS of info on what we have been up to!

SO SO SO SO SO MUCH HAS BEEN HAPPENING AND I HAVEN'T HAD TIME TO BLOG ANY OF IT!!! 

HALLLLLLPPPP

Clearly I haven't kept up with my New Year's Resolution to blog more... as it is mid April and this is my first post of the year.
(Not a fan of not being able to put emojis on here.)

Ok now that my freakout is out of the way,

let's start over.

Hi my name is Jessie 

and I haven't updated my blog in over 5 months.

clearly a lot has happened since my last post.

Holidays,

Medical changes with the Coops,

Every day life.

So I'm just going to jump in and update you on all of it!

Let's see.

Holidays.

Thanksgiving.

We had a lot of fun on Thanksgiving! 

We hosted again this year because of Jeff's schedule.

Family came over and everyone brought something and it was delicious!

I made my first pumpkin pie from scratch and it was a hit!

Birthday.

Yes I classify my birthday as a holiday.

I'm a pretty important person.

;)

Just kidding.

Kind of.

Anywhoo, 

This year (as well as 3 of the last 4 years) Jeffrey has been out of town for my birthday.

He was in Utah for a training for the Army.

But he was good this year and had my present all ready for me before my birthday!

He is helping with my workout clothes stock pile!

YAY!

I asked for a pair of plain black ankle length Nike workout pants.

He was adorable and said, " I know you wanted all black, but I thought these were cool"

They say nike on the calf in camo print.

He also bought the Seahawk ones I have been wanting for 2 years!

My first official, purchased for me, Seahawks clothing!

I have been wearing Jeff's clothes for years!

Then a few of my best friends and I went out and partied!

Most of our friends are past the going out and drinking thing, and most of the time I am too,

But I was only 21 for 5 months before I was pregnant, so I never really went out and did anything, So I like to go out.

I also LOVE to dance.

That's basically all I want to do, all the time!

I had so much fun and love all of the people who made time to come out and celebrate with me!
They made it a great night!

Cooper's birthday.
Cooper Turned three!!!
HOW?
Also, people always say two year olds are the worst.
False.
Literally the day he turned three, he learned to say "no" and have a bit of an attitude.
He typically is very well behaved and listens well, but he has a few new, shall we call them... "tricks"?
He has mastered the "noodle" in all of the most inconvenient spots you could imagine:
grocery stores, doctors offices, middle of the parking lot.
He just goes limp and stops walking.

He is also very well versed in the "stop dead when walking, plop down at that spot and refuse to move/walk"
which is my personal favorite,
especially when we are in the middle of Walmart
(oh how I miss you Target. Why you gotta be so far away?? )
and my hands are full with the few groceries we need
(seriously kid, I need 4 things, FOUR, can't you keep it together for FOUR things??)
and he stops dead and I eventually have to throw him over my shoulder and carry him out with my hands full because my Walmart doesn't like to have handle baskets so I either have to carry everything or grab a cart, and I refuse to grab a cart for four things.

Cooper also is highly skilled in the "whine and jump up and down every time I tell him no to something he wants to do" action.
 EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

But in general, he is the sweetest 3 year old around.

Jeff's birthday.
Jeff is officially 25!
YAY!
I semi managed to throw a surprise party.
I had it all covered and he had no idea, until I was a little overzealous with allotting travel and down time between activities which had us sitting at a park for 2 hours before we could head to dinner.
Which kind of flags that something is up
My baaaaaaddd.
But it was a great time!
And he wasn't expecting all the people who were there so that was great!
All of our family, friends and coworkers really came through to celebrate!

Christmas.

Oh Christmas, how I love you.

And also secretly despise you and all the stresses you bring!

Our christmas was insane.

We were running all over the place to fit every part of the family in because of Jeff's schedule.

(Darn you Jeffrey and your impossible to have a decent time frame schedule)

We spent Christmas Eve with Jeff's dad's side of the family!

I received my second brand new Seahawks clothing item!

YAYAYAYAY!

I have a million hand me downs from Jeffrey, but I wanted my own shirt that actually fit me and I finally have one!

Thanks Ray and Lianne!

Then we wound up at Texas Roadhouse for dinner!

Their rolls and cinnamon butter are well worth the calories!

SO delicous!

When we got home, Our Christmas elf, Woody, had left use all brand new jammie's to wear while we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Grinch, and Toy Story That Time Forgot.

We all cuddled up next to the Christmas tree and drank our cocoas 

(Coop had Coop safe cocoa, and mama and daddy's may have had some other additives).

Then it was bed time and waiting for Santa to come!

Christmas morning we woke up and did our little family Christmas!

Coop was interested for a total of 4 presents then he was over it.

He literally had tons of tiny little presents that were individually wrapped 

(and took Santa and his elves HOURS to do) 

and he was just not interested. 

Yay..

Jeff and I on the other hand had a wonderful time!

We both wound up getting each other Beats headphones!

Then at 9, my parents and grandparents came

and we started all over!

It was such a crazy time!

My parents bought me a set of red wine glasses that I had been obsessing over

(All you Scandal fans out there, I officially have Olivia Pope wine glasses! 

Insert 12 hundred heart eyed emoji faces here!)

They also bought us a second freezer so we can hold our meat in there because we always love to buy in bulk!

Cooper was still not super interested in opening presents for some reason so we now had a giant pile stacked up to open later.

Then around 11, we left our house and made the 45 minute trek to Jeff's mom's house to do christmas with that side of the family!

His mom got me a fitbit which I LOVE, 

I got some awesome "Geeky" candles

homemade bath bombs and a mugcake mug

and some awesome salt and pepper shakers and soap dispenser for my kitchen.

Then we had a special delivery!

(Ok my geek side is about to show, no judgement)

WE ALL GOT HANDMADE FREAKING WEASLEY SWEATERS!

For those non nerds out there, Weasley sweaters are hand-stitched sweaters with your initial on it.

In Harry Potter, Ron's mom always sends her kids a sweater at Christmas.

I have an awesome friend who stitched our letters into sweaters we had bought!

Coops and I wear ours all the time!

Then we had a quick lunch because we had to drive home for Jeff to get to work.

Then Coop and I just hung out and throughout the day and he opened his presents at his leisure.

We had such a wonderful Christmas and were so blessed with the family we were able to spend it with, and the wonderful gifts we received!

New Year's.

New year's I spent with Jeff at work!

I had so much fun!

We have made it our little tradition since he started.

It was really cool to see him in action!

Easter.

Easter was the first holiday that Jeff hasn't had to work! 

We did an egg/basket hunt and lunch with family and it was great.

Then we went to celebrate our "fake" anniversary (you will read about that in the next section)

That's about it for holidays!

Apart from holidays, we had some special events!

Anniversaries.
In March, Jeff and I had our, as Jeff calls it our "fake" anniversary, because it is our dating anniversary and he doesn't consider it to be an actual anniversary anymore.
In general, I agree, but this year was our 10 year.
Which I think is something to celebrate!
So I planned a little candlelight indoor picnic,
with wine (of course) tons of fruit with melted chocolate,
and we watched the movie we saw on our second date which is when we became "official"
it was a lot of fun!

We also had our 4th wedding anniversary!
I was at Country Thunder celebrating one of my best friend in the whole entire world's bachelorette party so we didn't get to celebrate, but we will soon :)

Country Thunder.
speaking of Country Thunder,
it was my second year going.
It was SO MUCH FUN!
But also, I did not adult very well the first two days.
Oops.
I'm not really a camping person, but it really was a great time!
We left early because there was going to be a storm and we wanted to get out before it got all crazy.
I hope to go again next year with all the same people!!!

Other things,
All Coop'd Up,
my sign business is still doing well.
I love creating signs for all occasions and for friends :)

I'm looking in to school options which is super exciting, and stressful and overwhelming all at the same time. I thought I had figured out what I wanted to do, but to become certified, I would have to go to one of two schools in the state, both are over an hour and a half away, they don't have any online courses, and its $39,000 for the two year program, and none of my 92 college credits would transfer.
So that was a bummer.
But I have a few more ideas now and I just need to put aside the time to check them out!
Wish me luck!

I think that is about it for general life.

Now, on to the Coops...

So so so much has happened/changed.

Medical.

Last post left off with us having our consult (that took months to get) with OT.

We were so so so so excited to have the consult and they wanted to start working with Coops as soon as they could, as the sensory issues with food was his biggest issue.

So we started seeing her the same day we saw feeding because it is an hour drive there and an hour drive home to the facility.
No bueno doing that twice a week!

It started out well!
They worked on sensory issues using slime,
"snow" (shaving cream)
glue.

These things are typically things he has an aversion to in the beginning, then warms to it when he sees others doing it.
This worked great, but the issue is still textures of new foods.
Which is when we started using foods to "explore".
He would smash and play in them, which helped the touching aspect, but because he wasn't being encouraged to eat it like he is in feeding therapy,
and they both were being done in the same room,
he stared wanting to do just the "playing" aspect when we went to feeding therapy.
So I nixed the Occupational therapy,
because all Cooper was interested in doing with his chickpeas was smash them with a hammer.
Not an option after 9 months worth of feeding therapy...

So after all those months of trying to hard to get a consult, we wound up not even using them.

We have continued feeding therapy weekly and it has helped,
but Cooper is in that age where he is just picky in general, and not ever having a lot of options for foods, new things still REALLY freak him out.
So it's been a struggle.

Let's talk about scopes, food trials and all that fun stuff!
Cooper had another scope done at the end of December to see if the foods he was trialing were safe.

In November we added 5 new foods

They were buckwheat, psyllium Husk, chickpea, grapes and Strawberries. 

These allowed us to FINALLY make some  variations of real foods! 

Psyllium husk is such a big ingredient in helping foods rise when you are baking vegan, gluten free, grain free, rice free, soy free, nut free goods! 

Yikes that was a mouthful!

We were super excited to start making some fun foods!

We made pancakes, and cupcakes, and muffins!

As our luck would have it, Cooper failed the scope.

I received the call in the middle of cycle class and it was beyond disappointing. 

I was in tears because it was the first time I was actually having success making things for Coops, that 

1. resembled actual foods, and 2. that he LOVED.

I now had to take away foods he was interested in, and that is the hardest and most disheartening thing to do as an allergy mom with a kid with severe food aversion.

I had been worried about this scope and more specifically chickpeas when I added them because it was the first time Cooper has ever had any outward reaction to something he has eaten in his entire life.

He had had red cheeks and horrible diaper rash when we added chickpea and psyllium husk. 

It was during flu season, so I wasn't 100% sure it wasn't just sick, but the coincidence with adding the new food made me really uneasy. 

Previously his only "reaction" was food refusal after scarfing something down and loving it, he would just stop and flat out refuse eating, which we learned was him having some sort of reaction inside either his throat or belly. 

When we talked with the allergist, he said psyllium husk is so unlikely to be an allergen,so he is confident it is chickpeas. 

We have since, cut chickpeas from his diet, which cut the cupcakes as well, which Cooper was really bummed about. 

When we talked to GI and allergy after the failed scope, since we were confident in what the trigger food was, we decided to proceed by giving Cooper a steroid for 3 weeks to bring down any inflammation and discomfort from the food, then proceed on with new food trials. 

I was so broken hearted with the initial failed scope, that when we discussed this later, it was a Godsend.

GI was comfortable with us doing the steroid and adding a food or two, then scoping again to make sure it really was the chickpea, but as a mom, you know your kid, and it just didn't feel right when we added the chickpea, so I now know that Cooper can actually have a reaction to things, and I just need to look for any signs of a change with his body or his attitude.

When we finished this trial, we were kind of at a wall with food trial options because of the previous skin and blood test which showed Cooper's allergens.

Trying to feed a food aversion, 3 year old, exotic foods just wasn't an option, because even if they are deemed safe, he isn't going to eat them. 

So I wanted to do a retest.

Skin and blood tests are not nearly close to 100% accurate.

They are 40-60% accurate, so typically when you test positive on both tests to the same food, the allergist doesn't want you to trial that. 

Respectively, if you test negative to foods on both tests, the Doctor is willing to use that as a trial food.

So we did another test to see if things had changed from Coopers first one, which if you don't remember how insane those results were, you can see them here.

The thing about allergies is that you can become allergic to anything, at any time in your life. no matter if it was something that was a staple in your diet or a one time thing.

Your body changes so much that it develops and loses allergies/sensitivities all the time.

Kids especially.

So when we went in and did the skin test, they retested for the same items he did before and the results were so much different. 

So much so, that I stammered "wait, are you sure????" when they gave us the results.

Again, these are not accurate, but it is an indicator to whether a food is a good option to trial. 

The only way to truly know is by scoping after doing a food trial.

The only ones that came up as a positive were dairy, beef, pork, dust mites and cats.

So that opened up a lot more options to trial!!

Our doctor still wants to stay away form the typical big allergens but he did let us do one of them!!!

The top 8 allergens are milk, egg, fish, shellfish, treenuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans), peanuts, wheat and soybeans.

So this time Jeff and I discussed the foods we wanted to try to trial if they were available, based on foods we eat so we can actually make family meals and help Cooper with the social aspect of eating.

Having the same foods to eat as Mom and Dad hasn't been an option really, so we decided to try that if they came back negative.

So the foods we are trialing are:

Oats

sunflower (sun butter butter as Coop calls it)

turkey

and EGGS!

He hasn't had any reactions to anything so far, so we called allergy to see if we could add two more in for this trial before we scope. 

He is ok with that so we are also adding in 

brown rice (HE COULD EAT PASTA!!!!)

and tomato 

I cannot tell you how exciting this food trial is.

For a few months shy of 2 years, we have been so limited on food options and I cannot tell you how many things I have made and failed miserably with. 

How many expensive ingredients that I literally threw down the drain because it was yet again another "Pinterest fail" 

(due to my experimenting using Coop safe ingredients in other peoples recipes that were not meant to use those ingredients.)

Have you all ever seen that site? 

http://pinterestfail.com/

That essentially has been my life for the last 20 months.

"Where good intentions come to die"

^so. freaking. true.^

We are finally trialing real foods that I can make real things with.

Sunflower butter and eggs literally have been a big ole' shiny paper wrapped, with a giant bow on top, gift from God.

The amount of things I can make for him now are unreal.

There have been so many tears of joy in our kitchen, from this Mama.

I made bread.

YOU GUYS.

I MADE 5 INGREDIENT FLOURLESS BREAD THAT ACTUALLY WORKED!

It's green. I don't know why it's green. I don't care that it's green.

IT WAS FREAKING BREAD!

The most glorious green bread you ever did see!

And Cooper ate the whole first piece of toast.

He hasn't ever finished a meal. and he did.

It may have taken a game, literally an hour of constant interaction, and a gripload of Enjoylife allergy friendly chocolate.

He may not have taken a single bite since that day.

But it's food.

I can make him a sunflower butter and Jelly sandwich.

I can make waffles.

Muffins.

Cookies.

Cakes.

Granola bars.

Seriously. The options. I want to cry. I have cried. So many times

So at this point in time, here is a comprehensive list of EVERY single food item he can eat.
*Anything starred has to be checked with packaging to ensure ingredient list is safe, there are so many sneaky ingredients in things you wouldn't think had anything in it.

Bananas: whole, pouches*, banana chips*

Apples: whole, applesauce*, dried apples*,  chips*, juice*, apple cider vinegar

Carrots: whole

White potato: whole, homemade fries, some frozen fry brands*, In N Out fries, potato chips (lays, avocado and coconut oil Boulder brand, fry's Kroger brand), starch, flour

Coconut: whole, water, milk*, oil, shredded* (sweetened or unsweetened), chips*, flour, sugar, Luna and Larry's Organic Coconut bliss Vanilla Island ice cream

Avocado: (will not eat unless used in baking) whole, oil 

Chicken: (will not eat) non hormone, non injected, NO DELI MEAT

Buckwheat: whole, flour

Psyllium husk: whole, flour

Grapes: whole, jam/jelly*, Juice*

Strawberries: whole, jam/jelly*

single ingredients he can have:

carbonated water, honey, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla, imitation butter liquid, cocoa powder, raw cacao powder, salt, 

random packaged foods that are safe:

Dum Dums, smarties, some candy canes*, Welches blue bag fruit snacks, Fluff marshmallow sauce, Enjoy life chocolate (chips and ONLY red bar- Dark Chocolate), log cabin syrup

WE FOUND AN ICE CREAM PLACE THAT COOPER CAN EAT AT!!!! Check out Frost!
He can have the banana and the strawberry sorbet!

trialing:

oat: whole, homemade granola, homemade granola bars, flour (no packaged oatmeal or granola bars)

sunflower: seeds, sunflower butter, ground into flour

egg: whole, whites, yolks

turkey: (will not eat) non hormone, non injected, NO DELI MEAT

brown rice: whole, pasta*, flour, Rice Chex cereal!!!! Rice Crispy cereal!!!

tomato: whole, pasta sauce*, ketchup*

So he has 11 safe foods, and if these are all safe, we will be up to 17!!!
Dear Lord, please let these all be safe.

Other Medical news.
the last few months we have been focusing on eating more orally and not doing the 4 full bottles a day.
He has been interested in eating so we went with it.
In doing that, the weight he gained from the tube, has been lost.
He went down from his October to December weight check visit.
and he has stayed consistent with weight since.
So he finally was up to the 12th percentile, and he is back in the 3rd.

If he doesn't gain by his next appointment we will have to adjust and use the tube.

Other Coop news.
We are officially done with naps (HALLLLLPPPP)
We are in our big boy bed! (a kick-butt Buzz Lightyear rocket ship!)
OFFICIALLY A DIAPER FREE HOUSEHOLD!! (YASSSSSSSSSS)
So many changes.
My little guy is practically a grown ass man.
Stop growing little one!

Well that's all I can think of now.
Hoping to keep up with the blogging a little bit more now that I'm caught up.
My next post will probably be just an entire post of pictures.
What do you all think of that?

Until next time!
Thanks for sticking to the end!