Can I have a snack?

Every so often I go through those periods of time where everything just feels overwhelming.  It usually starts somewhere around January 2 as I try to clean up from the holidays and get the kids ready to go back to school and keep up with my regular life and wrap up the end of the year stuff.  Not soon after the feeling being overwhelmed takes root, I come down with a full blown case of the January grumps.  The biggest symptoms is that I am not much fun to be around.  The only cure seems to be a martini or a trip to somewhere tropical.

This year I decided to add the additional challenge of putting Zachary on a gluten free diet.  It has worked so well for me and my headaches and allergies, that I thought it might be a magic cure for him too.  I thought I would wait until his annual check-up to ask the doctor what he thought.  Turns out I forgot to take Zach to his annual check-up in July (and when I called about his ears, they reminded me) and so I took him at the end of December.  The doctor thought it sounded like a good idea to try the diet. Somehow the idea of putting a child who will eat nothing on a restrictive diet that cuts out all the things he likes most sounded like a good idea to the doctor AND me?  Must have been that darn holiday magical glow that makes everything look so good.

So I have taken my sort of surly second grader and made him into an all out pain in the ass.  He won't eat anything and he is starving all the time.  He is not pleasant when he is starving.  He doesn't sleep when he is starving.  When he doesn't sleep, neither do I.  Do you see how well this is going to go?

He just finished a dinner of steak, potatoes and green beans.  The steak was marinated in a gluten free marinade (Stubs beef marinade, which is a pantry staple I learned from my sister).  The marinade (now that turns out to be gluten free) was too spicy for him.  The potato was a potato so he wasn't going to eat that either.  Anything green is out automatically, even though green beans are his "favorite" vegetable.  Then not twenty minutes after clearing his uneaten plate, he asks "can I have a snack?  one of those gluten free rice crispy bars?"

If I wasn't so crabby myself, I might take pity on him.  But such is life. Sorry kid, you are going to have to starve for another two weeks until we determine that we can't live with this diet if it makes you to irritable to live with, even if you don't get headaches or stomachaches anymore. (or maybe by then I won't be so grumpy and it will be much more manageable).