No mo' moo for you!

It's now official: no more dairy for me.
I'd been pretty certain this was the case for several weeks, but yesterday sealed the deal. Early on, our pediatrician had suggested that Henry might have a sensitivity to the protein in dairy products, based on some symptoms he'd been having. An initial trial of me abstaining from dairy (I'm nursing him, so the dairy comes from me) seemed to have no effect on the early symptoms. Or so I thought. Rather hopefully. A few weeks down the road I decided to try eliminating dairy again, based on some new symptoms the little guy had. And voila, he seemed to be doing better after two weeks. But an ice cream loving voice in my head kept whispering that maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe eliminating dairy merely coincided with some other changes. So I had a little dairy, and noticed some little differences for the worse. But maybe those were coincidences, too, I thought. And then on Tuesday I watched as the Starbucks barista ignored (or maybe misheard) my request for a soy latte and instead poured a venti (medium for you non-Starbucks folks) sized serving of skim milk. Mmmm, real milk. Dairy milk. Soy milk and rice milk are decent substitutes, but I'd been craving the real deal. So I didn't correct the barista, and thought, "well, we'll see what happens." This is the largest portion of milk I'd had in about three weeks, and boy did I see what happened. Sheer hell broke lose, that's what. Less than 24 hours after my indulgent venti latte Henry's sensitive tummy revolted. I had not seen this crabby, inconsolable version of my baby in weeks. No amount of bouncing, cuddling, singing, begging, pleading, or bribery could calm the poor babe. He was miserable. Period. This was one of the primary symptoms that had led the pediatrician to think Henry might have a dairy sensitivity to begin with. I'd have to say, after that little "experiment" with a full-fledged return to dairy land, I will be abstaining until further notice with the exception of very small doses. Never mind that it's ice cream season, it's simply not worth the misery it invokes for me and Henry.

Speaking of ice cream, in an uncanny bit of timing, Henry and I were pursued by not one, but two ice cream trucks during our walk yesterday. No joke. One of them followed at a short distance for about half a mile, making frequent stops for the gleeful neighborhood kids. Just when I thought I'd escaped from the tempting truck, I heard that siren's call of cheesy music and saw a second truck. How many ice cream trucks do they need within a mile radius? Two apparently. At the same exact time of day. While my child wails in pain because his mommy drank milk and now has to swear off her beloved dairy. Needless to say, it was torture. Good thing Henry's even more beloved to me. And there's always Rice Dream and Tofu Pops, right???