Going gluten-free is not a choice I would have made for myself, but I am glad that it was necessary because I think my health is much better because of it. I was far from forcing it on anyone else in my family although I thought it would be good to give it a trial just to see the results. I knew I would never be able to convince my husband to try it out, but several signs pointed to the fact that it would be a good thing to try with my daughter.
Several things convinced me to put my daughter on a gluten-free trial: our efforts with toilet training were going flat. She had the tools and she understood, but she seemed unable to focus enough to take the next step. Secondly, she seemed out of control when she ate certain things. For example, eating the free cookie in the grocery store when we went shopping literally caused her to run around in circles for quite a while when we got home. Thirdly, during her check-up visits to the chiropractor (since she was an infant) always concluded with the fact that her “tummy bone” was out and had to be adjusted.
I had been gluten-free for some time when we decided to do a trial with the Princess. My husband didn’t really understand, but he backed me up as much as he was able. I decided that since she might have a hard time understanding I was going to take a few weeks to prepare so that the trial would be a little easier on both of us.
First thing we tackled was cookies. My daughter has a sweet tooth and she was used to ALWAYS getting a cookie when we went grocery shopping. I looked around for a gluten-free recipe that I could make easily and quickly and hopefully make her a part of. Here was what I used: Christmas Cookie Dough Balls I easily adapted it to be gluten-free using this flours blend. The Princess loved rolling the balls into different colored sugar sprinkles and we popped those cookies into a baggie and took them into the store with us. Tantrum avoided!
Another thing I did was buy some gluten-free bread. When I went gluten-free I just skipped the bread a lot of times, but this wasn’t an option with the Princess. I planned on making bread weekly, but I need a back-up for when we had those weeks.
At the time the Princess was in love with Animal crackers. Since they weren’t easily bought anymore ($5 plus for a smallish bag of animal crackers, yikes!) I found a gluten-free recipe and made them. They were a little more work then the sugar cookies, but doable. The Princess enjoyed them a lot and we had endless games of “What animal is this, Mommy? I think it’s a tiger!”
To be continued…