Today is the first day...

... of the rest of our lives. That's such a common, overused statement. It's kind of a 'duh' sort of statement; it doesn't even really mean anything. I'm sure the very first person to ever say it felt immensely clever and superior, but it's a tired set of words. Except that today, it works. It really does feel like the first day of the rest of our lives.

Today is the day that Tater Tot passed her dairy challenge. Actually, it's the second day that she passed her dairy challenge, but the first day involved a lot of snot, bickering, clumpy hershey's powder in warm milk, and one of the most idiotic movies I've seen in about a fortnight that I now cannot get out of my head, so we're gonna skip over that part.

Personally, I think saying that she passed a dairy challenge sounds like she was mud wrestling lactating cattle, or that she was crowned Queen of the Milk Maids (which at this point in her life is about as likely as her eating a ketchup popsicle and not looking like the zombie apocalypse hit. {FYI - she would actually eat a ketchup popsicle. I know this because she asked me for one once, and was shocked to learn they don't exist, and insisted I make one for her. I'm still a little traumatized, and don't want to talk about it anymore.}) In reality, passing a food challenge is way more colossal. After a lifetime (Tater Tot's) of being deathly allergic to eggsdairywheatsoypeanut, she's finally outgrown all but the peanut. This is a huge, ginormous deal, folks.

I am so used to shopping, planning, ordering, substituting, pacifying, and dealing with food allergy stuff that I'm a little stunned to only have one simple restriction now. And by simple, I mean she still has the one allergy that can kill her if she looks at it wonky, but still way more manageable than the deadly five of yesterday, especially if those mangy little fluffy-tailed rat wannabes would stop lobbing peanut shells into our yard.

Earlier in the day, Tater was feeling decidedly underwhelmed about the whole deal. To her, it's just been a big, fat list of no-no foods that she hasn't dwelt on much. As the day has progressed, she's been seeing the milky bright light of possibility. Tonight, we made a list of things she can now have, and though it's long, it's only the tip of the iceberg.

Here's a condensed version of things she wants to try tomorrow:

yogurt (the orange dreamsicle kind her brothers fight over)
pizza
donuts
those round candies the boys fight over (we finally figured out she meant M&Ms)
ding-dongs
Baskin Robbins
Doritos
carmel sauce
chocolate milk
strawberry milk
milkshakes
Twix
string cheese

That's what she wants for breffy. I see an industrial size bottle of Tums on her lunch list.


I keep thinking of things that she'll get to do for the very first time: eat an ice cream cone at the food court, have cupcakes at birthday parties, try a root beer float. The only thing more thrilling than getting to let dairy back into our lives is the fact that she can tell me all about her new discoveries. As fun as it is to watch a baby try new things, it's immensely more fun to hear about it from a chatty young foodie.

There is one small fly in the milk. When I tucked her in tonight, she hugged me and whispered, "Mom, the most exciting part of all is that now I can have a pet cow!"