Further Incentive...

Originally posted on 10/1/2008

As if I did not have enough reasons to start a blog in the first place... this week presented me even more inspiration. In general, I am doing this as a sort of catharsis for myself. But mostly, I am doing it for Ella. She is so little and it is really hard for her to understand why other kids get to eat the things that she cannot. It is heartbreaking. She thinks about it all of the time. She begs us to give her wheat. After all, she has been to nirvana and wants to go back. The fact that it causes her to get itchy welts all over her shoulders and back does not seem to matter. The kids wants donuts and croissants, for God's sake! Who wants to go to a birthday party and not be able to eat the pizza and cake? So we spend our days trying to remind her how bad the stuff is for her as I try and pull culinary masterpieces out of my hat just to try give her SOME joy.

Anyway, Ella is very musical and she has started making up songs. She wants to make a CD and she is always saying, "This is my new song, we should put this on the CD!" And then she sings... Yesterday she sang me a song called, "Little Bits of Wheat are a Little Treat". And then she proceeded to sing a little ditty about how all she wants to eat is wheat and oh, what a treat! Poor kid!

Today, at school pick up, my heart sank when I saw all of the children sitting and eating a snack of animal cookies, as Ella played by herself (without snack) in the sandbox. As soon as she saw me, she ran to me and said, "Mommy, can I have an animal cracker, too?" Thankfully, I keep a bag of gluten-free animal crackers in her cubbie. Not sure why the teachers did not offer her one. I am annoyed by this, but will write it off as an oversight. But it just added fuel to my fire and gave me further incentive to keep going on my mission...