My First Blog Award!!

Thanks to Erin at Yes, Our Hands Are Full, I received my very first beautiful blog award.  :)  How sweet! Thanks Erin! Check out her blog here:http://schmit-ourhandsarefull.blogspot.com/

The rules for accepting this award are that you first thank the person who awarded you, then pick new blogs that you feel deserve this award and notify them that they have won. So fun! Play along with me!  :)


1. McKinney Clan
2. Autism's Bitch
3. 1-2-3 Autism Free
4. Lauren Furrer
5. Adventures in Autism
6. The World is like a book
7. Injecting Sense
8. Abby's Photos
9. Green and Crunchy
10. Don't bite the dog: Life with an autistic toddler
11. The Wellness Philosophy Nutrition Blog
12. Love Veggies and Yoga




~7 Things to know about me~


1. I LOVE my son more than anything in this entire world.
2. I am about 2 months away from having my cosmetology license
3. I love sports and being active
4. I love warm weather and beaches; do not love winter/cold weather
5. Autism is a battle that has made Mike and I's relationship grow closer
6. I am a night owl in a morning person's world
7. I consider myself a pretty friendly and out-going person. I love people!




:)  :)  :)

Cashew Butter Reese Cups :)

Thursday night I decided to try a recipe that a friend recommended to us for Almond butter Reese Cups. I wanted something to send in for Gabe's Valentine's Day party at school Friday. Reese Cups are Gabe's all time fav. candy. He LOVES peanut butter and was very sad when he couldn't have it anymore due to his sensitivity.

Instead of almond butter, I decided to try salted, cashew butter with the enojy life allergy-free chocolate bars and semi-sweet chocolate chips. I melted the chocolate over the stove for a few minutes in a saucepan and then poured the first layer in muffin cups. Stick them in the freezer for about 10 minutes until hard and then add a tsp of your favorite nut butter and then cover the nut butter with more chocolate. Freeze again until they are hardened and wrap individually with saran wrap! I stored them in the fridge, not sure if they would go bad otherwise. I assume they would. Gabe LOVVVVVVVED them. He was SO thrilled to be getting candy again and had chocolate everywhere after. Little does he know that it's healthy candy!  :) I love moments like that!

Here is a picture of them! They turned out great and were so simple to make. I was so excited!

I give up!

Yes, I said it. I give up on the SC diet! Gabe is miserable and not showing any positive signs from it, so I give up. We are going to stay GFCF and of course, organic and use many of the SCD recipes for health reasons. I am actually thinking of trying to make Gabe the yoghurt also. Might as well, right? lol
 I honestly think that there is no reason to live if you are not happy with life, and Gabe not being happy is not ok for me. His happiness is the MOST important thing in this world to me. I love him more than anything and will try just about anything to recover him from this terrible thing called autism, but I will NOT sit back and let him be un-happy. It would be one thing if he was doing amazing new things and could poop everyday without the use of a laxative, but sadly that just is not the case.

I'm sure that SCD works for many, many people and I do think it has many great qualities. It just doesn't work for Gabe. We gave it almost a full 3 month trial period. The weirdest thing is, we let Gabe get his favorite pizza from a local place called Monical's (they make a GF crust and we don't get cheese) and we saw NO reactions to coming off SCD. If anything, he pooped 4 times in the last 2 days and they were really "normal" consistency again (his poops have been TERRIBLE, smelly and gritty from all the nuts and nut based flours on SCD). I can't explain why except that maybe his body just really needed the carbs from the rice based pizza crust again. It is probably really hard for a 5yr old to have enough energy only eating nuts and meats like he was. We are really hopeful that by doing a combination of really healthy meals from both GFCF and SCD we can still heal Gabe's gut and keep him the happy, healthy little boy that we know and love.  Life is all about balance.  :)

Running low on motivation for SCD....

 We are almost to our wit's end with the SC Diet. Gabe is not doing better, if anything, he may be worse off than before. His constipation is back full-force and I know he is just miserable. We have had to give him laxatives almost every day or every other day. His teacher says he is still the wonderfully sweet and loving little boy at school, but his focus and attention span have gone away completely. That was really sad for us to hear because she raved about how great he was doing in those areas at the beginning of the school year when he was GFCF, low sugar and low carb.  How can you do well on GFCF low sugar/low carb, but not do well on the SCD? You would think that he would excel on this diet.... autism sucks!!!

We have looked in to a few possibilities of why he would be struggling and have added all of his supplements back in to his diet that we had removed that were not SCD legal. He is doing a little better from those coming back, but I can't really attribute that to SCD. If anyone has any suggestions or experiences please feel free to share. I am open to all ideas at this point. lol
We are going to give the diet until the end of this month and then we may go back to GFCF again if there is no changes by then. Gabe is getting really tired of eating the same foods I think and It is far too time consuming and expensive of a diet to not see any improvements in two full months (will be 3 months after Feb.).