I understand. A few people have suggested I try GAPS for myself, but it makes being GFCF look easy! While a GF kitchen might be necessary for someone with Celiac disease, I wonder if it is always necessary for someone that may be gluten intolerant for other reasons. I still showed improvement without my mom keeping a GF kitchen, and so did my brother. There's a saying that may apply here: "Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good." It sounds like you believe the entire family and kitchen must be GF for your daughter to make any improvement. If gluten isn't the problem, then a GF kitchen won't help. If gluten is a problem, than a GF diet, without a GF kitchen, may be enough to show improvement. Then, if it seems like it's helping, maybe you change your kitchen at that point to GF. Do you feel like your daughter's doctors are taking the problem seriously? Do you feel like they've run out of ideas?

I know you didn't say that her health less important than what you cook. I said that it almost "comes across" that way but that I'm sure it isn't true, or you wouldn't be asking for advice. Also, your original post didn't indicate that you'd spent years trying elimination diets with your family. Please remember, there are people out there that will "try an elimination diet" for just two or three days and when it doesn't work, they give up. They didn't even try long enough to learn where all the hidden gluten is. Originally, your post didn't contain enough information for me to tell if you are one of these people or not. Now that I have more details, I can see that you don't fall into this category. Please forgive me for offending you.

This suggests that using "spaced repetition systems" such as Anki, Mnemosyne, etc. is a good idea. I know I've found them very effective myself for learning new vocabulary in a foreign language. I also plan to use Anki on the iPad for my son's memory work.

Don't ignore this, especially since you thought she may have had a milk problem as a baby. It sounds like a GFCF trial is in order, even if your husband thinks you're nuts. Surely he doesn't think your daughters symptoms are normal? What is his theory of the cause of her problems? If nobody else has any other ideas, then what harm is a few month trial? If it doesn't help, then you'll know to look elsewhere for the cause.

Playing at the table sounds normal enough, although annoying for parents. [quote name=mommymilkies; A weird thing she does have going on that I suspect may be dietary or allergy related' date=' though, is that most days for the past year or so, she has had 2-15 bowel movements a day. Usually at the higher end and an increasing number of "accidents". It's freaking me out, but because of her stomach pain recently [/quote] This is not normal. Let me say it again. 2-15 BMs per day is not normal! Something is wrong. I suspect that once somebody figures out what it is, the eating battles will start to go away, or at least be nothing worse than average for age 3. I had chronic diarrhea in high school because I thought it was normal. I also had 8 years of chronic sinus infections that doctors couldn't figure out the cause of. It all went away when I went off gluten. The doctors (in the 1990s) thought I was nuts. It was another 12 years before a gluten intolerance test came back positive. I'm glad I ignored them and stayed off gluten. Going GF poses no health risk. It's annoying, but if gluten isn't actually a problem and she avoids it, no harm is done. The other choice is to keep your daughter on gluten (or dairy, or whatever else is suspect) and risk it damaging her body while you wait for a test to show a problem. For a biopsy to show celiac damage, the damage has to be really, really bad. Blood tests often show false negatives, as well. Many people are deficient in IgA antibodies, so IgA to gluten may come back as "normal," but only because the immune system is already damaged and can't make enough IgA to give a positive test result. My salivary and intestinal levels of IgA are extremely low, so a doctor would be foolish to rely on IgA results for gluten or gliadin for me. A false negative would likely show up on a blood test.

Well, would you be inclined to eat if much of what you ate made you sick? Chronic diarrhea and being underweight are the "classic" symptoms of celiac disease. Also, celiac is highly linked to autoimmune diseases, which you said run in the family. Is your daughter stubborn about everything, or just eating? Your first post almost makes it sound like cooking being convenient is more important to you than your daughter's health. I'm sure that isn't true, or you wouldn't be asking all of us for help. :001_smile: Please remember that your daughter isn't your brother. She sounds like a little girl who's body is sick and needs to be fixed.

Take your temperature three times a day and chart it or a few weeks. Pick the same three times every day and make sure not to eat or drink for 20 minutes before. A temperature pattern that is very erratic suggests low cortisol levels. Then you can get a saliva test that tests your cortisol level at 8 am, 12 pm, 4 pm, and 10 pm to see if the levels or rhythym are off.

Make sur you decide if you want natural latex or if synthetic is okay. We decided against "normal" mattresses because of all the potentially harmful flame retardants they are sprayed with. Latex mattresses are exempt.

We wanted a king size natural latex mattress, but we didn't want to pay $1500-2000 for it. Two years ago, we bought a 4" ErgoSoft natural latex mattress topper from Amazon for $650. We covered it with a matress pad and stuck it on the floor. It is the most comfortable mattress ever! (Although, like the info said, it was a little stiff for the first few nights.) The only thing I would change is to buy a zip up mattress cover so the entire mattress was encased. It arrived in a big box. They had vacuumed sealed it to fix into a box the size of a washer.

It seems like our 5 year old often gets a bad attitude after playing the Wii or watching cartoons for 15-20 minutes. It's not the content of the shows, from what we can tell. After his time is up, I'll tell him he can't watch any more for the rest of the day, he says okay calmly, and then shortly after, he'll ask again. When I say no, he falls apart and throws a fit. We have to be very careful to get him lots of food and protein, especially in the morning, or his attitude is terrible. Is it possible his body is very sensitive to screen time, like it is to food? He's like Jeckyll and Hyde, depending upon what he's eaten.

For those of you with visual-spatial children, when did you first notice the signs? My oldest was very verbal at a young age and had excellent pronunciation. My 2 year old is less verbal, and often seems to tune us out. If we go to him and get his attention, he' usually does a good job obeying. Often, it truly seems as if he didn't hear us. We know he understands what we tell him, when he's paying attention. His hearing is fine. He seems super visual and is more mechanical than his big brother was at this age. He learned his colors without me really teaching them and he learned the names of the letters with barely any practice. In fact, a lot of what he does is just suddenly have a new skill, whereas my oldest took a normal amount of practice to learn to roll over, crawl, walk, talk, etc. I'm wondering these are signs of being a visual-spatial learner. Any thoughts?

We need to buy a new fridge. I've only ever had regular fridges. What are the pros and cons of a side-by-side fridge? We don't care about a water dispenser or an ice maker, and we have a medium size chest freezer.

The QF types I know tended to believe that "everything that happens is God's will." They don't seem to believe in coincidences or random chance of anything. In fact, the logical extension of their view would be to throw out the entire branch or probability and statistics. I'm a Christian but there's one woman than annoys me with her constant "The Lord did this or that." For example, after getting pregnant successfully with fertility treatment, it was "The Lord let me get pregnant" or something like that. I felt like yelling, "No, the fertility treatment worked! God set up the reproductive system, but nowhere does the Bible say that he sits there and directs each sperm either towards or away from the egg every time you have intercourse."

I think that season 6, part 2 starts tonight. Does anyone know when we'll be able to rent the episode on iTunes or somewhere else?

We were members two different times. We really liked how their memberships are month to month. The employees didn't hassle us when we wanted to cancel our memberships, either.

We gave up toothpaste two years ago. Our teeth feel cleaner without it (probably because toothpaste has glycerine) and my morning breath has deceased by about 66%. DH occasionally uses baking soda, but mostly uses just water. I use it a few times per week and the rest of the time I use Toothsoap. It's a special soap for brushing teeth. It takes a little getting used to, but I would never switch back to toothpaste. I buy it through their website when they have good sales and one bottle of the shreds can last me more than a year.

Wheat has been bred to have a higher gluten content. It couldn't have been genetically modified in the 1950s because it wasn't until then that scientists even discovered the shape of DNA. GM crops are created by people actually adding genes to the plant's DNA. That is different that selectively breeding crops or animals. In any case, the higher gluten content of flour today may play a role. Also, fewer people eat sourdough type breads that help increase the digestibility of gluten.

In the spring, I decided to wean my newly 2 year old. He was still nursing 6-8 times per day (not at night), and wouldn't go to sleep any other way. I have chronic health problems and my doctor had run out of nursing-safe treatments for me to try. I really needed to finally be able to use some new treatments. Another doctor told me how when she couldn't get her youngest to wean at age 3, her oldest child suggested painting that stuff people paint on thumbs to stop thumbsucking on her nipples. She said the girl tried each side once, declared the milk yucky, and never asked again. Last winter, I painted on a yucky paste of baking powder and cream of tartar a few times and he wouldn't nurse, but just cried for hours. I waited a few more months and tried gradually cutting out a single feeding. Distraction with chocolate milk (a rare treat) and other treats didn't work. He would just be inconsolable until I nursed him. Just after his 2nd birthday I tried again with the "yucky nipple" approach. I painted on some herbal extract stuff that is truly disgusting tasting, but wouldn't hurt him. He tried to get some milk anyway, so then I dripped some white vinegar down into his mouth. He decided to try the other side and found it was also yucky. He gave up and went away without a meltdown. Over the next few days, he would start to ask for milk, then stop and say, "milk yucky." He made one half-hearted attempt to latch on a few days later, but didn't cry when I reminded the milk was yucky. I hope I don't sound like a cruel mother. I gradually weaned my older son at age 2 1/2 while pregnant with hyperemesis gravidarum, so it's not like I wasn't committed to nursing toddlers. This boy, however, made cold turkey seem the only way to go. I didn't really expect it to work, and I was a wreck for several days. My son became much happier. He wasn't constantly getting upset if I tried to delay nursing. Within a day or two, he would let his dad walk around with him and then put him down to sleep. It was so nice to not be the only one that coud get him to sleep anymore. Anyway, if you find that a gradual approach isn't working, keep this idea in the back of your mind. (Please note, I wouldn't recommend this for babies. But a child that is almost two is much different.)

Would you rather be turned into a Borg or a Cyberman? After several people have voted, I'll reveal my personal preference.

I have no experience with one, but on a few blogs I visit, people have mentioned websites for SGM "survivors." Some of the commenters have mentioned how legalistic, and even spiritual abusive, their former churches were. I don't know if they are all that way, but it's worth looking into.

I spend a lot of time reading Thehousingbubbleblog.com. The general consensus there is that the above is correct if the house has already been foreclosed on. According to current accounting rules, banks can list the house as an "asset" worth what it may have been worth when prices peaked 4-5 years ago. This makes them look much more solvent than they are, since these houses wouldn't sell for this much anymore. As soon as they sell a foreclosure, the fake value of the house is removed from their books. If they took a real loss, in actual money, then that would be added to the books. It makes them look like they are in poor financial, because they are. They just can't hide it as easily when the foreclosures sell. As far as short sales, many of the posters at The Housing Bubble Blog are of the opinion that the bank takes forever because they want the owner to keep paying the mortgage and maintaining the house as long as possible. The same for loan modifications that the owners, in the end, still can't afford either. The idea is to string along the owner as long as possible before finally approving a short sale or foreclosing.

Gluten problems run in my family. None of us has ever been offically diagnosed, though. My brother is much, much easier to get along with when he's off gluten. I think that if he had been off gluten for all of his teenage age years, he and my parents wouldn't have been fighting all the time. He went off gluten for good a few years ago and even his fiance noticed that he stopped snapping at her within a week. Depression can be caused by food allergies and intolerances. I don't know if that's the cause with your daughter, but it's worth looking into. Also, look into fish oil and various vitamin and mineral deficiences, such as B12. Three books worth getting from the library are "The Diet Cure" and "The Mood Cure" by Julia Ross and "Is This My Child" by ?

I forgot to mention that he already listens to audio books for 1-2 hours per day...more if I let him. He's not one of these kids that sits around saying, "I'm bored...there's nothing to do." He has a great time playing with boxes, or wearing our driving gloves on his feet, pretending to be a monkey. I think he needs something a little more stimulating, though. What else is a good toy but doesn't lead to the mess that Legos seems to involve? He just discovered Monopoly last week, but I only want to play that once a week.