Allergy Parent's Bat Signal: Homeschool, 504, something else?

I have probably sat down to write this blog post, or one very similar a million times.  I wind up getting rambly and not having a real point, so they are all just archived and will never see the light of the actual interwebz, which is likely for the best.

Today, however, I have a purpose in mind.  I would like feedback.  I would like ideas.  I would like someone to pat me on the back and say "there there I get it, this is how we handle it and it will all be okay."

Trouble is you can't give me the last one 100% and it is the one I want the most.  But I do know that I can get some ideas and feedback from other been there done this parents, and that is primarily what I am hoping for most realistically.

The Beans has allergies to six out of the top eight major food allergens.  I have discussed it briefly on this blog a few times, but mostly because I didn't want to make this into an "allergy mom" blog I have refrained.  I didn't mention all the weird reactions, the ones we couldn't explain.  I haven't detailed the panic I have felt countless times in silly situations that should be innocuous and no big deal because I am paralyzed with fear that Beans has been exposed and may puff up and stop breathing on me.  I didn't share about the time his face swelled up or the countless hives we have had to watch and Benadryl out of existence.

I didn't want this to become and "allergy mom" blog because, well if we gonna be blunt, I don't want to be an allergy mom.  It was a little corner of my world where I could just pretend it isn't a biggie.

But I suck at pretending.

So, the Beans will be three in April.  Apart from the normal "oh my gosh my baaaaaby!'ing that I am doing at this I am also arrested with a new panic.

School.

Starting with the 2014/15 school year in August the Beans is preschool eligible.  Bunyan and I have oscillated a million times on where we stand on the subject.  He was the one to panic first (outloud) and say "can't we just homeschool him?"

I never pictured being a homeschool parent.  I used to be pretty opposed to the idea.  At present, I have educated myself a lot more on what GOOD homeschooling looks like and I have no opposition to it in principal.  Just ... do I want to do it?

My hesitancies with homeschooling Beans, and I mean really homeschooling him, not the summer school stuff I do with Meatball which we are prepping for already this year, stem from two main thoughts.

One: He would love a classroom environment SO much.

Two: I was kinda looking forward to having him go to school for MY sake.  

So if item numero dos makes me a bad mom, okay.  I am going for honest here, and to be honest I was looking forward to the possibilities of 3 hours a day while he is in preschool AND then once he is in full day maybe I could go back to work?  I could be ME, more than just the mom and house elf.  Not necessarily a decision maker, but financially this would make a big difference to us as a family too.

Item number one is the part that makes me sad.  I don't know how to look into homeschooling groups in my area to help with the socialization stuff.  The one I found says it is "closed" which was pretty discouraging.  I am not well versed on my state's laws regarding homeschool, I have a lot of research to do.

Academically, I am not worried.  That is so not my issue.  It is all the other stuff.

But when I start to think about sending him off to school ... I am overwhelmed with the number of opportunities with which he could be exposed.  I am well versed in 504 plans, I will link some stuff I have found at the end of this post in case it is helpful to anyone else.  But a 504 plan is just a plan.  Even a really good one, even when executed by a phenomenal teacher and school staff is less secure and safe than my home is.  My home is kept as free of any allergen as possible.

You start talking about removing allergens from public school classrooms and people bust out the pitch forks and start talking about their kid's fundamental need and right to have peanut butter.

It isn't that I disagree with those parents.  It is just that when debating about their 8 hours of inconvenience that can help improve the chances of keeping my kid alive I have a hard time not becoming emotionally involved in the discussion.  

And honestly, I don't think peanut and tree nut free classrooms in my school district and area are a big deal anymore, so it isn't the peanut butter.  It is all the other stuff.  Beans cannot come in contact with peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, egg, soy, gluten, honey, bananas, and possibly latex.  Even if parents, teachers and a school were willing it would be challenging.  Add to this that they won't be willing to remove all those things from the school day for my special snowflake and you introduce risks.  What if Jimmy doesn't wash his hands and touches Beans?  What if snacks are mixed up and he eats something he shouldn't?  What if, what if, what if?! 

So then my mind goes back to homeschooling and round and round we go.  Bunyan is no better with this, he cycles as much as I do about it.

So here is the part where I hope to get feedback.  If you DO have a school aged kiddo with food allergies what do you do?  If your child attends school (public or otherwise) outside your home what kind of 504 plan do you have in place?  If you homeschool what does that look like and what brought you to this decision?

If you don't have any feedback for me, but could share this with anyone you think might, I would super appreciate it too.  I just want to gather as much info as possible so that when we do commit to a decision we can do it in as informed a way as possible.

Links:
Rather than slap 50 links up here I am just going to provide you with one.  This is the link to my Pinterest board, Allergy Resources.  For the record, my name is not actually "Helen Highwater" but it is a fitting pseudonym none the less ;)  I also started a Pinterest board for homeschooling and preschool in addition to lots of other stuff.

dafuq is dat?

Okay so not only do I suck at all things domestic, but I also seem to bomb at blogging with regularity lately.  If it makes it any better, I have been thinking about blogging and taking lots of pictures of projects, ideas and failures in my absence.  That's something, right?  Right.

To make it up to you, hows about some dafuq moments brought to you ala moi?

The best laid plans ...

So I have been pinning my ass off (oh if only that were possible in a literal sense!) with summer ideas so that we don't need to save up on a "bail fund" for mommy.  One of the many ideas I have pinned, and intend to do, is chore sticks.  Here are some pretty ones.

cool idea, but my children will
make this a weapon

very cute

the Queen of chore sticks

So I started a chore stick project I found here (pictured above).  These sticks are like da bomb, as my 13 year old self would have said.  She made a metric ton of them, with awesome ideas ranging from checking tire pressure to dusting everything in the house.  They are cute, they are numerous, and they are free!  Yay!  How can I screw this up? Oh, have more faith in me than that my friends!  More on this to come ... but here is an in progress image for you.

It shows such promise, doesn't it.  Yeah, that would be false advertising.

Did I forget a step?

So apart from being *ahem* crafty and all that, I also am thrifty.  Yes, I am the One Cheap Biotch, and sometimes I do it well.  While I was perusing my local Fresh & Easy aisles I discovered several weeks ago that they have a clearance rack.  Cue happy dance!  Yes, you can just imagine my utter joy to find items that are expiring that day or they had too many of that are marked down like 50% in some cases!

So they had some of their dough in the cold clearance for 75 cents each, and I happily grabbed two because anything that can masquerade as "homemade" without me having to haul my Kitchen Aid out is one of my favorite meals.  It expired that day, and I wasn't going to use it, so I came home and froze it.  So far so good.

Well that was like 2 weeks ago, so the other day I pulled it out to use for the next day.  I have seen my mom, who has more domestic skills than me but only marginally, do the following with frozen dough:  oil up a bowl, put the frozen dough in it, cover it, let the dough thaw and rise.  Easy peasy, right?  Yeah, I can do that!

So I coat two bowls in olive oil.  I place the frozen dough in the bowls.  I then cover with a towel and refrigerate.

See the problem?  Well I didn't, yet.

Fast forward and I can see through my clear bowl that it is thawed and risen and I am thinking I am pretty hot shit so far, now just to figure out what to do with it ... when I remove the towel.

This image search yielded a picture taken by someone
who knew what they were doing.  Show off.

Ew.

My dough was thawed and risen quite nicely, and it also had this nice hard, dry layer covering it.

Last night while watching a recording of one of my most fave shows ever, Bitchen Kitchen, my hero Nadia G ever so simply explained the step I missed.  I had it right all the way up to the towel ... because under the towel you need to cover the bowl with plastic wrap.  Okay, face palm, duh, WTF was I thinking?!  I mean seriously, I knew that, somewhere in my mind I did.  My mom always did that too.  Stupid, stupid.

So I ruined $1.25 worth of my "cheap" dough being a flaming moron.  Dafuq was I thinking?!

Where in the grocery store is ...?

In order to not snap and start drinking at 9:30 every morning this summer I am doing summer school/homeschool  with the oldest.  It may sound like more work, but its not.  Keeping him busy and occupying his mind is priceless for my sanity and keeps him from burning the house down.  One of the things I am doing is making a weekly grocery store scavenger hunt.  I will share them later, but ultimately I make him go do his own thing with a clip board while I get the stuff we need, both of us are happy with this situation.  But this week I felt like I was the ten year old with the clip board.

I wanted to make something special for Meatball because he is really trying not to make me go insane.  I found this recipe for the Pumpkin Juice from Harry Potter a while back and decided this was the week to make it.  So I have everything on the short list, but cardamon.  And that is what???  I am pretty sure that it is a spice, so I head to the baking aisle, a place I am not spotted often.

Do you have any idea how many freaking spices there are to chose from?!  Holy spice trade Batman!

Sigh.  Cardamom, that evasive foe.

I stood there for like 5,000 hours with a screaming baby who is able to grab things out of the cart now even from his little prison perch in the front of the cart -- that stupid buckle is worthless with Houdini baby -- and is throwing them at innocent bystanders who are dashing by desperately in fear.

And I cannot find anything that even sounds like cardamom.

When the Beans' screams reached a decibel level that I am sure had bats in South America crashing into cave walls in confusion, I decided that this was not the week for a special drink for any Minion.  Maybe for Mommy, but not for the Minions.

So I still don't have cardamom, still not fully sure what it is I need -- about to google it, no worries, I will figure this shit out -- and I am pretty sure there are people still talking about me and my howler monkey baby and clip board toting geek child.

Is this a dafuq moment?  I think so.

sparkly squishies

Summer is rapidly approaching.  We live in a local that registers temperatures well over 100 daily in the summer months, and sickly enough we are already hitting those gawdawful numbers.  Its going to suck a ton come May ... I don't even want to think about June or *shudder* July yet.

Combined with the ungodly temperatures is the simple fact that I will also have the oldest minion home all day too.  Bored.  And it is even too hot for him to go outside for more than a few minutes at a time.  The need to find ways to fill these hours combined with the fact that the Meatball has had some issues with school this year I decided to do "summer school" with the kiddos this year.  Usually I am too burned out from my own teaching-school-year to really consider this, but not having taught for the entirety of the last school year for the first time in a while makes me feel much more charged about this prospect.

For three months this year, I will be a homeschool mom.

So whilst planning how I am going to do this without a blatant mutiny on the part of the minions I realized that I would need to make this a lot of fun too -- but that I would be able to do fun stuff I could never tackle as a teacher of 30 children.

So while excitedly planning some stuff (I will share later) that Meatball and I will be working on this summer I realized that I will have to entertain the Beans or we will get a whole lotta nuthin' done.  Cue the mad Pintercrack search for fun toddler/baby toys, tasks and games.

Holy shmoly, there is a lot!

First on the list to make, because it was cheap and I had some of it on hand already, was what we are very seriously referring to as the Squishy Sparklies.  The original intent of these DIY item was to inspire pre-writing skills in preschoolers.  Obviously at one the Beans is younger than that so my intended use is different.

Original idea was pinned from here (a place I think I will be referencing a lot! Awesome site!) and the complex instructions that not even I could mess up are as follows ...

Supplies:

• 2 bottles dollar store hair gel
• 2 plastic sandwich size bags per Squishy
• 1 gallon size plastic bag per Squishy
• glitter
• food coloring

Directions:

1. Squeeze a less than precise amount of hair gel into one sandwich bag.  I didn't measure it, just squirted enough in there so that the baggie would feel gooey when sealed.

2. Add some food coloring and glitter.  I had to adjust amounts a few times with this until I had the effect I wanted.

3. Really important step -- seal the baggie!

4. Squish the Squishy until its mixed up, then double and triple bag that suckah!

even I found this satisfying

triple bag that bad boy

I put each baggie in a second sandwich bag then inside of a gallon bag.  I did this because I am not using it as a pre-writing tool yet, someday we will.  I know that there is a good chance the Beans will figure out how to open the bags, and if he has to do it three times prior to actually getting to the gooey stuff I stand a chance at circumventing most of the mess.  These are only given to the Beans when he is in his highchair with me at the table or in the Gulag while I am there with him.  Only a moron would give a child food coloring and glitter laced semi-liquids and hope for the best.

Yeah, I totally fear that last statement will be quoted in a future post accompanied by a really awesome picture of my baby looking like a sparkly Smurf with a mohawk.

green with green food coloring

blue with blue

yellow food coloring and copper glitter

red food coloring and rainbow glitter