to the multitude who weighed in with ideas and experiences and just good wishes regarding milk and asthma and all that mad stuff…thank you.  so much.  we saw our family doctor (who’s not utterly opposed to the possibility of a dairy connection, btw, it’s just not his area of expertise in any way) on Thursday, and Oscar’s lungs are clear and good to go once again.  the doc too was strongly in support of putting O back on the rice milk for now and then trying cow’s milk again in a month or two once cold season is over and before allergy season begins, just to see if we can establish a pattern.  allergy tests will follow, but probably not until fall.

the rice milk O drinks is organic and fortified with vitamin D and calcium, so i feel pretty good about giving it to him.  while his diet isn’t heavily meat-reliant, he gets a lot of protein and actually gravitates more to protein foods than carbs, so i’m not over-worried about him having any protein deficiency.  we do give him soy milk occasionally too but don’t want to overload the soy in his diet as kids with dairy sensitivities often have the same reactions to soy.

and mostly, yep, i’m still just kinda hoping he’ll grow out of it.  so having all of you tell me stories of siblings and relatives and cousins’ pet dogs with terrible childhood asthma that magically went away in adulthood…that was like candy.  i love you.  i like to imagine myself a realist and i do prefer to see the details of what’s coming down the road at me, but clearly…when it comes to my kid, i’m all over the possibility of magical salvation, of having him snatched from the jaws of even very small, controllable, more irritant-than-life-threatening kinds of dragons.  and in the meantime, he gets tasty organics.  god, i am such a yuppie.

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and in the off chance that you spend your nights dreaming of rubbing elbows with my bourgeois self, some of us from eastern parts will be gathering May 16th-18th in bizarrely-picturesque Chester NS for our own highly-tongue-in-cheek version of BlogHer, since San Francisco is thousands of dollars away for us and July just…well…inconvenient for most.  Maritime BlogHer will involve absolutely no speeches, panels, or experts, but probably copious amounts of wine, beer, and chocolate.  i have first dibs on the chocolate, just so all are clear.  we’re numbering a cozy 8-10 strong, renting a B&B for the weekend, and…um…plan to hang out.  invitations are utterly open. :)

however, if you do plan to come and kiss fish (hey, it’s local custom, one has to be culturally sensitive) with us, we’ll need confirmation by the end of this month.  please join our facebook group (it’s the only one entitled Maritime BlogHer, easy to find) and let us know your travel plans so we can try to coordinate rooms and drives and all that good stuff.

and i can regale you with all the exciting things i learn about dairy and asthma in the interim.