what is the culprit?

It's no big secret that we've been trying to figure out the cause of samantha's eczema recently. This undertaking has caused me to take drastic measures, such as not drinking coke, eating chocolate, or other dairy foods (including but not limited to CHEESE ah-hem), nuts, fish, shellfish, and egg. It actually hasn't been as hard as I had originally thought, thanks to my 5-pack of gum that I bought so I can chew whenever I get a craving for chocolate chip cookies, cheese and crackers, or coke and popcorn.

Anyway, the whole point I was going to make was that we've been consulting with a nutritionist to find out why samantha hasn't gained any weight in the last two months and is now hovering around the 10th percentile in height and weight for her age. As we were going over her eating history, the hard-to-forget projectile vomitus due to the rice cereal was mentioned. Later in an email, the lady suggested that I add rice to my list of things I was eliminating. Rice.

Rice. Rice. Rice. I eat rice every day, sometimes twice a day. Everyone I see eats rice every day, sometimes twice a day. Everyone in this entire stinking country eats rice every day, and I'm just now realizing this could potentially be the missing link to my child's eczema? How could I not have thought of this before?

No wonder the expensive creams ($40 a tube) and medicines don't help. No wonder my special, home-made laundry detergent hasn't helped. No wonder my sacrifice of coke, chocolate, and cheese isn't really gettign anywhere. Because I'm eating rice every day!

It's still too early to tell if it really is rice, though that seems to be a logical conclusion that I am only just now making. But it comes at a good time, when I was really discouraged about progress in treating her skin. I did some research and learned that rice is a very uncommon allergy in america because it is not considered a staple food, but in places like japan and other countries in the far east where rice is considered a staple, as many as 10% of the population can be allergic to rice. As I mentioned above, it does seem to be a sort of missing-link...like, making some sense of why we haven't been able to get rid of the problem. but I've been disillusioned before by solutions that haven't worked, so I'm not going to get my hopes up, but we'll see.

In other news, I was googling sopapillas today because I've been craving them like nothing else, and I found a lady's blog outlining how to do it. She's a texan (I know, I have to give a little leeway) living in new york and her entire blog is dedicated to down-home food. it was like pulling at my heartstrings when devoted several posts to Luby's, then more to chicken friend steak, and many handfuls to tex-mex. I think I have found a new recipe site! Sopapillas sometime this week, woo hoo!

Here are new pictures of my girls, being all fun and cute:

Emma has been trying to encourage samantha's crawling ability by getting down on all fours with her! They love chasing each other around the house and playing hide-and-seek or peekaboo!

I'm afraid samantha is going to be an early walker - she's already cruising well around the couches and standing up whenever her hands are free to pull her up.Emma helping me make cornbread and minestrone soup. She's actually a really good helper in the kitchen, and loves sitting on the counter and feeling like a big girl!And the big news of the weekend is that we painted our living room! The color looks a bit weird in the picture, but actually I really like the finished (or, partly finished) project. It really makes our house feel more inviting and totally changes the look of the place. Emma caught us painting last night about 9:30 and sat on the couch and watched with wide-eyed fascination. We still have a lot left to do, both in the living room, and in other rooms that we are wanting to paint, but it's been a fun thing to do together.