We found our sweet little boy hiding under a terrible veil of gluten

My last post spoke about the connection I had made personally between the gluten in my food, and the moods that I experience as a result. After determining that there is definitely a cause & effect relationship there, we also discovered that our son suffers from much the same reaction to gluten.

While we knew that age two was simply training for age three, and that three is training for the teen years (and all those other axioms about behavior which people like to throw about when they learn the age of your child) we had an inkling that Jamey's erratic and devilish behavior was being caused by something more than normal development.

What we discovered one day after a long drive (aka the Sunday nap), during which Jamey's only snack was a bag of Goldfish crackers, was that gluten renders him almost completely incapable of rational behavior. When he started acting up after returning home from the drive/nap we tried a time out. This quickly deteriorated into a complete meltdown. He was spitting, screaming, and stripping. He could not be contained to his time out corner. He could not be consoled. He was beyond all rational thought and behavior. Even when we abandoned the time out, he couldn't really calm down.

Fast forward several weeks, and we now have a child who behaves entirely different. If we screw up and give him anything with gluten in it, we don't have to read labels to find out what happened. We know by his behavior. He spits, screams and melts down.

But since we've been avoiding gluten like the plague, he is one of the sweetest three-year-olds I've ever seen. Sure, he's still three and he still behaves like a three year old, but his behaviors make sense. He's upset for a reason now, rather that completely at random.

It's hard to imagine what some parents must go through if their children are suffering in this same way, and they never find out why. So please, if you know anyone who might benefit from reading this, feel free to share this article with them. Tell them to start researching gluten and mood. Have them contact me. Just do what you can to help them so that they might enjoy their children as much as we enjoy ours.

Missed connections

Our wedding photographer (Craig Mitchelldyer) is on Facebook and I've been following him for some time now. His posts are often non-work-related because he's just a normal guy. However, he linked to an article today from another wedding photographer that puts a little more perspective on what it means to be such an intimate part of someones life, but only for such a small part of it.

The article, Remains of the Day in the Washingtonian was written by photographer Matt Mendelsohn.

After reading the article, and as a member of the wedding vendor community, I must say that his feelings are dead-on. We often find ourselves wondering what our customers are up to after the big day. We have a sense of connection, but it almost always gets lost on the day of the wedding (or the day we ship the product).

We rarely hear how the wedding actually went, or what the guests thought of the menus, table numbers, etc. at the reception. We often have brides telling us that they'll send us pictures of the event, but rarely receive them.

There really is almost a sense of lost friendship once it's all said and done. We've built a bond with these people, become a part of their day, and then it's done. Just like that. A flash in the pan, and we usually don't even get to see that much.

So here is the full comment that I left on Craig's Facebook wall in response to the article. I didn't realize how much I was going to write until I started...


Amazing article Craig. Thanks so much for sharing.

When you met us and shot our wedding back in November of '08, I was working in IT, and my wife Amanda wasn't working. We didn't have a ton of money to spend on the wedding and received a lot of financial help from her parents. Her mom (a self-trained graphic designer) helped us design our invitations and we printed and cut them ourselves.

She had been doing this for a few months prior to us needing them as a hobby/business on Etsy. She continued to do this throughout the time leading up to our wedding as a way to help finance the event. It eventually grew into a full-time business for her.

Fast forward a year and a half after our wedding, and our son Jameson was born. Four months later, my mother-in-law is burnt out / bored with the wedding stationery business that she's created.

At the same time, Amanda and I are desperately searching for a way for me to quit my job and stay home with our son. So we talked with my mother-in-law, and decided to try taking over the business so that I could stay home, and she could move on to something that was more interesting for her.

Now two and a half years later, Amanda runs the stationery business, and I am a full-time stay at home dad!

We often have some of the same thoughts about our customers as what Matt expressed in this article. We feel as though we are so much a part of their lives right up to the wedding, and then nothing... They're off of our radar and we rarely hear any more about them.

Of course a few of them return to order other products in the future, or they refer a friend, and we get to hear a glimpse of their story from the friend's perspective. But that's it.

Amanda has made some friends that she keeps in contact with here on Facebook, but beyond that we truly have no idea what has happened to the fairy tale that we helped produce.

We are working on putting together a wedding map on our website to help showcase some of the products that we've sold, and where in the world they've ended up. We hope to be able to include some small tidbits of the story of each couple as well, but so much of that will have to come from them. It just seems like it would make the whole thing more real, more personal, more interesting. I hope that our customers will feel the same way and help us to build a living map of the stories that we've been a part of.

Amanda and I certainly cherish the memories that you helped us capture on our wedding day. We still go back to the Edgefield as often as possible, and walk around the grounds. We stop on the hill behind the Winery Wing and look at the water tower. We walk through the vineyard and always take our own pictures in the same place that you took some for us (including the one you used for the DVD label). We hang out on the balconies and remember the first kiss.

We remember the rainbow that happened just before she walked down the aisle. I couldn't see it from where I was out in front of Blackberry Hall, but she could from the back door where she was waiting to make her entrance. You were inside waiting for her to come in, so you weren't able to get a shot of it, but it is still one of our favorite memories.

All in all, the memories that photographers help their clients capture are often the ones that get remembered the best, because there is always physical proof to remind us. The memories that don't get captured, the ones that live only in our minds, and the lives that continue to create more memories are the true reason for the day.

But without the memories that do get captured by the photographers, those moments can only live on as long as someone remembers them well enough to tell someone else. Photographs can help so much with keeping those memories alive. And Matt is right, it's not all about the little details of the wedding day. Those are all just for show. The details that truly matter are those that happen after the cameras leave, the fairy tale is over, and life goes back to being normal (whatever that is).

We have a new office!

Well, our office project is nearly complete. We still have a little bit of finish work to do and a heat pump to be installed, but Amanda is now doing all of her work in the new office.

The building started out looking like this:

And now it looks like this:

You can see all of our progress pictures here: The New Office

I haven't kept up on the blog, because we've been focusing everything on getting this done. It's been a huge learning experience for me. Amanda says she'll never ask for another project like this again. And I'm pretty sure my father-in-law wishes he hadn't retired! :-)

Overall though, this has been an awesome summer and all of the hard work has finally paid off. I'm hoping that, with this project pretty much behind us now, we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming and life will return to normal again.

One of the best parts of this whole thing, is that Jamey finally gets his own room. Until Amanda was able to move into the new space, Jamey had been stuck in about a 6'x10' room with no closet. Now he has a much larger room with space for all of his toys (which gets them out of our living room) and a closet. He loves it!

I have taken over his old room as my office/hobby room, which should be plenty of space for now.

We had moved everything out of the building and into our house (and my in-law's garage) prior to the renovation. Now that we each have our own spaces again, we can all get our things organized and not be tip-toeing around each other anymore. We finally have our house back! :-)

I'm hoping to be able to keep up on this a little more often now that the project is complete. Jamey has come so far, and there are so many things that I really should have been writing about but just never took the time. And the business continues to amaze me with how well it's doing (thanks to all of Amanda's hard work). Life certainly has changed around here. And it's definitely for the better!

Wow, it's been a long time

So I haven't really been been keeping up with the blogging, because I've been busy keeping up with my son. He just turned two last week, and is turning out to be an awesome little guy!

He is so happy, and everyone who meets him adores him. My wife and I have been amazed at how happy and friendly he is all the time. The only time that he really gets crabby or naughty is when he's ready for bed. But since we've realized this, he's been even easier to put down for naps, and to bed at night. We just have to catch him at the right time. If we wait too long, he can get over-tired and things can get a little hairy... :-/

The business is still going along quite well, with Amanda continuing to run it and me continuing to be Jamey's primary care-giver. We both love this arrangement since we are both doing something we love. It's amazing how much better life is when you're not doing something because you have to, but rather because you want to. I am actually looking to completely quit my old day job (again). I've been working one day a week for about the last eighteen months now, but it's time to stop that and only work projects now. Doing this will allow us just that much more freedom to schedule our lives and do what we need/want to do whenever we feel the need/want. :-)

It still blows me away that we have this opportunity. I feel like I'm practically retired at age 34. My father-in-law is now looking to retire soon as well, and this has really driven home the feeling, because once that happens no one will be leaving the house on a regular basis to go to work. Our only obligations will be to get our packages to the post office. It's kinda crazy when you think about it!

In order to facilitate the growing business, we have decided to move it into one of our out buildings. This will nearly double the amount of space that we can dedicate to the business, and will make it much easier to setup an efficient workflow. It might be a bit of a slow process, but it will definitely be worth it in the end. The building is currently being used for storage for a lot of our extra/seasonal stuff. In order to allow us to use it for the business, it is going to take some slight upgrading including some electrical changes, weather-sealing, flooring, and paint. We also purchased a ton of shelving from one of our small suppliers who recently went out of business, so we'll have plenty of space to organize the business stock, and some more left over to help organize the storage space. It's an exciting change, and Amanda and I can't wait for it to be completed.

I'll also have a small workshop area in the building like I do now, and am looking at ways to add some new items to our product line! It will give me something more to tinker with, and hopefully allow us to grow the business even further. :-)

I guess that's about it for now. Maybe I'll post some pictures soon of the building before we got started, and some progress pictures along the way...

About: Life

Life takes some funny turns. I originally started this blog thinking that it would be full of insightful things that I learned by being a stay at home worker. Now that my wife and I have switched roles, and I am a stay at home parent instead, I've been unsure of what to write about.

I still contract with my old day job employer and work one day a week plus special projects. So wouldn't it just figure that on the one day last week that I was working outside the home, my son got his first ride in an ambulance...

I was just leaving work when I got a frantic call from my mother in law who asked if I could get my wife on the phone and get her to stop. You see she was racing into town with our 14 month old son who was apparently in shock from his first encounter with peanut butter. My mother in law wanted to catch up with her so that she could ride in the back seat and keep an eye on our son. I tried to get in touch with my wife, but there was no getting through. To top it off, she just changed cell phones and her voice mail is not setup yet, so I couldn't even leave a message. I couldn't text her, because I was driving toward her as quickly as possible.

A couple of minutes later (which felt like forever) I got a call from my wife saying that she'd met up with the ambulance and that my son was doing fine. They were going to leave her car and ride in the ambulance the rest of the way to the hospital. I would meet them there.

Skip ahead to the hospital and I went to the ED admitting desk to find out if they were there yet. At first they told me they didn't even have a record of them as incoming, but then found them and said they weren't here yet. So I waited.

My father in law shows up, taking time away from work. And we waited.

I see an ambulance go by the doors. And we waited.

Finally they call my son's name. I go up to the desk, go through the admitting process and they take me back to the room where my wife and son are talking with the doctor. My son's eyelids are swollen and pink, and he's covered in tiny little hives. They ended up giving him some Benadryl and some oral steroids to reduce the swelling. At this point, they're not sure if it really was a reaction to the peanuts or not, so they recommend that we see an allergist as soon as possible.

My son is now fine. We've seen his regular doctor and got the referral we need for our insurance to cover a visit with the allergist. For now we're avoiding peanuts and waiting for tomorrow to schedule an appointment to see the allergist.

When I thought of all of the firsts that I might miss by working outside of the home, this one hadn't even occurred to me. But I hate that my wife had to go through this one without me. She did an awesome job, and kept a cool head until she knew he was safe, but I still would have rather been there with them.

I imagined losing my son that day. I never want to have that feeling again.

The boy says momma

I worked my old day job again today. When I got home my wife said that she had been fighting SAD since yesterday. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a type of seasonal depression that can vary in it's strength. Around here (the Pacific Northwest) it seems like practically everybody feels it at least occasionally. She needed some cheering up and our son had been fairly cranky today, which obviously didn't help. So I took baby duty for a while and let her focus a little more on what she'd actually been trying to accomplish for the day.

At one point, while I was holding him and trying to show him some videos that he likes on my computer, he turned around to my wife and finally started saying "momma" in a manner which actually seems to indicate that he knows what he's saying. :-) He's been saying "da da" for months now, but he hadn't really said it convincingly until recently. Even then it was only partially convincing. This evening, the "momma" was definitely real.

I'm glad that even though I worked outside of the home today I didn't miss this. These are the moments that I wanted so desperately to be here for. I would have hated to come home and find out that he'd done it while I was at work. Thankfully, even though he was saying "momma", he waited for "da da". :-)