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Having a kid on a special diet is so hard.  Yes, I did just whine a little. I love food. My kids love food. We particularly love chocolate.  A lot.  A. Whole. Lot.  Especially when it is baked in to that decadent form of gooey goodness we call chocolate chip cookies.  Oh yeah.... To my dismay, all the mainstream chocolate chips have dairy and soy lecithin added. Boo.  Soy lecithin is on the "no no" list for my son and we are limiting dairy.  What when chocolate chip manufacturers thinking when they added an ingredient like soy lecithin to unsuspecting chocolate?  Because the only thing I really know about soy lecithin is that it is an emulsifier and I don't understand the manufacturing process of chocolate chips - I can't answer why they put it in there! LOL....  But, I kept searching the good search and finally found what I was looking for!



Why, YES! You did hear angels singing!

Mini chocolate chips made by Enjoy Life.  They are free. Well, not free dollar wise, but free of a lot of different allergens and stuff.  They are gluten, dairy, peanut, tree nut, soy, egg and casein free.  You would think that a chocolate chip without that stuff would not be a choco-piece-o-heaven, but a choco-piece-o-well.... you know..... not good.  I have to say, I was a bit skeptical (what if they did not melt and I had dry toasty unchocolately goodness?) and the chocolate chips were not cheap by any means, but I bit the bullet and brought home. 

They were AWESOME!  They melted and everything!  They tasted marvelous!  My kids, my husband, and my refined tastesbuds could not tell they were lacking any of those allergens......  That is good!  I can not wait to try these on other things, like in my trail mix recipe!  Woot!

Ok, so here are the details if you want to snag you a bag.  You can buy Enjoy Life chocolate chips in mini chips or chunks. They are available online at The Gluten Free Mall or at your local grocery store for around $5 a bag.  Enjoy Life also has many other products I am excited to try out, like their boom Choco boom chocolate bars. If you click on that link there is currently a coupon for 75 cents off two!  It is worth your time to run over to their website at http://www.enjoylifefoods.com/, and check out their other products.  You may find it makes feeding those on those "free" diets much easier.

When I lay down at night with my husband, I can pretty much count on there being more than the two of us that wake up in our bed.  You know how it is, you are sleeping, content, dreaming; all the stress and wrinkles of the day are melting away. Your body is hard at work making repairs and your brain is busy processing all the day's data, storing it away in our brain files.  

Then I hear it.  The sound of carpet fibers being bent and crushed under little feet.  I hope it is the dog.  But, I know deep down, that it is one of the children.  What do they want.  My brain stops processing the former day's information.  A file or two - particularly the one containing the memory of where I put my car keys, is dropped on my brain floor.  My body stops making repairs, the emerging grey hair, wrinkle, or skin sag will be allowed to continue on it's way to making me look a year or two older than necessary. 

I feel tapping.  I initially try to ignore it.  Maybe if I pretend it is not there, it will go away like your bills.  What child is it?  Is it the littlest one, the typical one who is so sweet to snuggle with still?  She doesn't take up too much space, and the smell of her hair is about as precious as it can be.  That would be okay.  The tapping gets more insistent.  I hear the voice of my six year old daughter.  "Mommy, I am scared, can I sleep with you." 

I say, "Go get your pillow and blanket and you can lay on the floor."  Don't judge me, this child snores like a freight train and coughs every 5 seconds due to her allergies. She is not snuggly. She is all arms and legs and muscle.  She says, "I don't want to sleep on the floor. I want to sleep with you."   I tell her to go around and ask her father.  I am hoping that he tells her the same thing.  Nope.  He hauls her up into the bed and puts her smack dab in the middle.  I am thinking I could have done that, I just did not want to. So now, I get to look like the mean parent.  I am laying there trying to get comfortable with a six year old's knee in my right side, while her coughing threatens to drive me to full insanity, when I hear more feet. 

It is the snuggly one.  She trips over something in the floor and starts to fuss, I tell her to come to me and haul her up in the bed.  She is sleeping on my left side.  I am a mommy sandwich.  I find myself thinking that it could be a long night and briefly consider the sofa, or one of the now empty kid's bed.  I wonder how exactly am I going to extract myself from the bed in the morning without waking one of them up. 

I sorta sleep.  When I wake up in the morning, I flip the 3 year old, who has drooled in my hair, over my body and put her next to her sister.  In the process, I wake the three year up.  Why is it she can stay asleep in the car, at 5 pm, when I don't want her to sleep and we are trying everything to wake her up, but is the lightest sleeper in the world at 7 am?  I wake up a little cranky and she is now asking me to carry her to the livingroom.  I make her walk.  I know I am a mean mommy.  But, I have not even had my first cup of coffee yet. 

I really do try to appreciate all these moments, even when they are hard and I am tired.  I try to remember graciousness and gratefullness, because they really do get big way too fast.  I sit on the sofa, hold my preschooler and drink my coffee.

I will leave you with this.  I have always loved it :) Enjoy!