Wi-Fi Necessary

When you can only get wi-fi in the bar, you might as well have a guinness while you wait for the Sunday papers to download.

Aliens

If only they made these in adult size, not just small boy size.

Words and Worms

I spoke to the Headmaster of our school today.  He was apologetic and promised to take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.  He will put a protocol in place, ensure staff are better educated about our issues and apparently even consult with me before the next event involving food.  I’m not sure I believe him on the last point, but we’ll see.  I felt better after speaking to him, mostly for the opportunity to vent some spleen.

As reported yesterday on facebook, the boy was far less bothered about the whole thing than I was.

He was quite happily digging for worms today while I had another quick rant at the husb.

The Trouble with Sprinkles

The school had a jubilee party today.  It was lovely and everyone had great fun.

Well, I say everyone.  I’m pretty sure that the boy didn’t enjoy having the flake on his ice-cream snatched from being almost in his open mouth (after I’d told him it would be safe) and he certainly wasn’t happy when I told him that actually he wouldn’t be able to decorate a fairy cake (like I’d told him he would).  I wasn’t happy about having to take food from him just as he was about to bite into it, or being the one that had to tell him that he couldn’t do the activity that all his friends were doing.

I was excited about the ice-cream van.  They claimed to be totally nut-free and I believed them.  One of their children has a nut allergy so why wouldn’t I?  What I forget, often, is that an allergy isn’t the same thing as anaphylaxis.  And as someone pointed out to me, what you know or research about a thing is usually based on your experience of it.  What ice-cream van man actually meant was that there weren’t any actual nuts in their ice-cream van, but not that all the ingredients were free from traces of nuts.  I don’t know what made me turn the box of flakes (well, not actual cadbury flakes but similar) around to check the ingredients but I’m glad I did.  According to the box they may have contained nuts.

I fight a constant internal battle.  Weighing up “it only says it may contain traces of nuts, not it’s definitely got nuts in it” with “yes, but his last reaction was so VICIOUS and I really don’t want either of us to go through that again plus it’s DANGEROUS for him, yes, as people are fond of telling me, we’ve got the medication but he could still DIE”.  It’s hard, I feel silly for reacting so strongly while at the same time shaking with fear because of the potential of the situation.

It’s the cake decorating that I’m really angry about though.

I was asked to take in a cake for the boy to decorate.  The school wanted to keep costs down, so they wouldn’t be able to guarantee where they got the cakes and whether or not they’d be ok for the boy (and presumably other allergic children in the school).

I’ll give you a minute to examine and absorb that statement.

I quite like baking so it wasn’t a problem to sling a batch of fairy cakes in the oven.  When we got to the cake decorating part of the afternoon I gave the boy his and was pleased that he seemed proud that he got a special cake “baked specially by mummy”.

Then I spotted the packets of sprinkles and realised that I didn’t recognise the packet.  They hadn’t come from any of the major “safe” supermarkets (i.e. not from Tesco) or any of the companies that I know of that make cake decorating supplies (Silver Spoon, Dr Oetker etc).  I grabbed a packet from one of the teachers and yes, they “may contain traces of nuts”.

I confess that I did actually kick a wall at that point.  Childish, but I was so frustrated.

Why go to all the trouble of asking me to bring in a cake when the ingredients to decorate it aren’t ok for him to use anyway?  What was the point?

I decorated the rest of our batch of cakes last night.  I wish I hadn’t now.  I wish I’d left a couple of them plain for the kids to decorate at home, with me.

Umbrellas (are for wimps)

I watched the weather today.

I knew it was going to rain.

I just didn’t realise how hard it was going to rain, or that it was going to rain exactly as I was on the afternoon school run.

We got very soggy.

But then if we hadn’t got very soggy, I wouldn’t have tried to take a picture of us being soggy for the blog and I wouldn’t have got this rather lovely snap of me and my girl.

Then the boy decided to come in on the act and it all got a bit comical.

A Sweet Little House

Alternative title – “Here’s one I made earlier”.

This is the house I made from mini marshmallows, stuck together with black writing icing, as an example for the Rainbows to copy at tonight’s meeting.

Given how small and fiddly mini marshmallows are, I was very impressed with their efforts.  Only 2 out of 16 didn’t quite work.

Actually, I was fairly impressed with my effort if I’m totally honest!

Definitely Summer

We had Grandma and Grandpa over for lunch today (guaranteed to make for a lovely afternoon), our first proper BBQ of the year and got the paddling pool out for the first time. It was a fab and relaxed afternoon. Definitely the start of summer.

Racing

Competitive, much?

We went to Motorsport at the Palace today.  It was great fun. We got to see plenty of vintage racing cars, as well as some more up to date ones.  The kids had a go on a couple of diggers (I fear it won’t be long before we find ourselves in Diggerland) and did some go-karting, the husband took about a million pictures of cars and I managed to squeeze into a pair of pre-pregnancy trousers (yes, my children are 4 and 6 and I’m still excited about pre-pregnancy trousers, and no my trousers weren’t really relevant to the day but I’m very pleased with myself anyway).  All in all a good day was had by all.

Worry Day

Today was a worrying day for me.

Today the boy had his annual allergy clinic appointment.

I worry about these appointments.  A lot.

At the last two years appointments, he’s had prick tests done.

A prick test involves putting drops of allergen (10 last time, plus 1 positive and 1 negative control) onto the skin of the inside of the forearm then scratching it into the skin with a teeny tiny razor.  It’s not much fun.  After that, you have to wait for half an hour to see which allergens will come up as positive – or painfully itchy as it’s also known.  That is, if anything, less fun than the scratching.

The first year I was shocked at how his peanut allergy came up.

Last year I was disappointed to see that not only was his peanut allergy stronger, but that he was also allergic to more things than the year before (and yes, I know that you can get a false positive but one of the things he tested positive for was silver birch and my goodness that one was accurate).

This year he didn’t get tested.

Initially I was relieved, but this evening I feel a bit like the rug’s been pulled from underneath me.

After all, if he’s not tested then how do I know if he’s more or less allergic to peanuts, or developing new allergies, or losing the milder ones he’s got?

One of the first things I discussed with the boy’s consultant today was perception of danger and perceived quality of life within families of allergic children.  It came out early on in the conversation that I still struggle on a daily basis with high levels of anxiety about the boy and his allergies.  Much more so than the boy, in fact.

He told me that in a study carried out recently it was revealed that an allergic child will often have a reasonable level of anxiety about his allergies (say 5 on a 1 to 10 scale with 1 being low and 10 being high).  His/her sibling(s) will generally have a similar level of concern.  In a lot of the cases studied the father of the family will have a slightly lower level of concern (say 3 or 4 on the same scale).  And in nearly all of the cases studied the mother’s level of concern will be much, much greater than the allergic child (usually up around the 9/10 mark on that scale).

These levels of concern of course affect perception of danger and perceived quality of life.

A tiny part of me thinks that he was probably going to do the prick tests as usual until our conversation developed in the direction it did.

It hasn’t helped.

I’m feeling unsettled.

Unlike the boy, who was totally incapable of keeping a straight face on the way home.

Warm Enough

Finally to go outside and try to perfect cartwheels when we got home from work. Long may it last!