opening a door to summer - and a verdict

Summertime has begun.

The Eldest is now home from school, and we're learning the new pattern of our days. Our first rainy day taught me how important it is that the boys spend hours on a playground or outside, moving fast. Our first playdate taught me much about balancing the boys, an outing oriented slightly more to one followed by an outing oriented more towards the other. The patterns are simple and full, but complex for all of that.

A current favorite outing is strawberry picking, which we have done twice now. We've been to Hanson's Farm, a small but sweet farm, and a perennial favorite of ours, Land Sake farm. The dusty but smiling folks at Land Sake know that the Toddles eats his weight in strawberries, but the field is fresh and bursting with berries, and nobody minds. The boys run races up and down the edges of the field, and the Toddles grins hugely. The Eldest catches the Toddles up at the end of a race, and whirls him around with delight. Despite a cranky morning with horrible footnotes, I turn to the other mother next to me. This is why you have two, I said, pushing aside the morning. She watched the kids run, thoughtful.

The Toddles, his face a wide streak of sticky, dark pink juice, grinned. Have a berry, Mama, he says, and offers to share. It tastes like summertime, and I can feel something in me start to ease.

Tonight, I am packing up strawberries for a treat tomorrow, when we will go and spend another day at the allergy clinic. The Eldest will eat pumpkin, and the Toddles will be skin tested for coconut, banana, flax and blueberry. We will come home, cranky but with some answers - and make strawberry soup.
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We're home from the allergy clinic, having dropped our poor, battered car at the mechanic. The Eldest bravely washed tinny pumpkin puree down with swigs of o.j., and is pronounced pumpkin-ready. So, a pumpkin pie-ish sort of thing is baking in my oven as I type.

In addition to being tested for coconut, flax, banana and blueberry, the Toddles was given the full environmental allergy skin testing, in case one of the local pollens has been exacerbating his reactions. Nope. We learned that he is not allergic to coconut, bananas, blueberries or flax, and he is still very (very) allergic to dust, as well as cats, dogs and feathers. Hmm.

So, still we have nothing. I am going to take the suggestion made by a reader and ask FAAN to have the soy yogurt tested. Maybe a lab can tell us more than the yogurt's customer service.