How Do Holidays Change With LPLD: Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  We are in the midst of our 12 days of celebrating.  This is how we do it with LPLD, maybe it will inspire you for however you celebrate in December, and throughout the year.

We spent the month of December making a batch or two of cookies each weekend, and saving them (in tins, outside in the cold to keep them fresh) for Christmas Eve.  A plate of that variety of cookies serves us as gifts for teachers, landlords, etc, as well as dessert for Christmas Eve and many days after.  A few cookies in front of an (electric) fireplace while singing Christmas carols is a perfect blend of treat and family-strengthening memory-maker for us.  At some point, we also like to have a birthday cake for Jesus, which is typically angel food cake, served with strawberries (previously frozen, it is December, after all).

For stocking stuffers, this year the girls got a container of Mike and Ike's each, which they polished off in a few short hours.  Otherwise, they get bubble bath, hair ties, band aids, stickers, temporary tattoos, pretty stationary, and/or jewelry for their stockings.  We have a steady supply of (fat free!) candy canes of various flavors on the Christmas tree for bonus treats.  In the future, we might put apples, oranges, or (low fat) granola bars in stockings, since it's hard to get anyone to eat breakfast on such an exciting morning, anyway.  But that's all the sweet treats we provide for the season!  Christmas lunch this year was a smorgasbord of snacks laid out, including a can of high-quality crab, shrimp, cocktail sauce, fat free cheese, tastey farm bread with balsamic vinegar, and carrot sticks.  For dinner we had prime rib, roast beets, and sweet potatoes.  After cold walks or bike rides outside, we are pretty easily swayed to pass out hot cocoa made with skim milk and chocolate syrup.

Now that we've done this for a few years, there certainly doesn't feel like much of a sacrifice in our family to have plenty of delicious LPLD options for the holidays.  I hope it feels like that for you and yours, too, and that you finish out 2018 with plenty of joy and relaxation!

Lowest Triglycerides Ever!

My eldest daughter just had her annual labs done.  Her triglyceride control has been so good, and blood draws so traumatic, that we just check them annually.  It was remarkable first of all because it was the best she has ever handled the blood draw.  We were able to obtain some numbing cream and tegaderm bandages to place in both antecubital fossas (where they draw blood, the inner elbow area) so that the actual needle stick wouldn't hurt on her skin.  We even showed her how well it worked the day before, so she could see how numb her skin went (she exclaimed, "my skin doesn't feel like my skin!").  We talked up how brave she was, and other examples of bravery, and watched some Winnie the Pooh during the draw, and talked about how silly it would be if honeybees could really laugh.  And then it was over!  And she got a pretzel and a hot chocolate (steamed skim milk with three pumps of nearly non fat chocolate syrup) from the local coffee shop to celebrate her bravery.  HURRAY!!

And then we got the results: 300!  I hate to sound like a jerk when there's many who would kill for such a good lab number with LPLD, but it really makes me nervous, it's so low.  I've always been more on the edge of, get it as close to 1000 without going over or putting her into pancreatitis, to make sure she's getting sufficient fat-soluble vitamins and fats that she can grow and develop well.  But she's growing so well, both height and weight, and thriving in school, that I guess it's OK!  Wow.  The only changes we've made recently is incorporating MCT oil instead of coconut oil into baked goods, and encouraging exercise through paying her a quarter for every quarter mile she walks, outside or on a treadmill.  Nothing drastic.  Maybe those changes have nothing to do with her low levels, maybe she's just bigger and getting a few more LPL enzymes with her bigger size, and so better able to process triglycerides in her limited way??  We're certainly not going to change her diet much - still all skim milk, fat free cheeses, no bacon or sausage, and no chocolate (except chocolate syrup and Snackwell's cookies).  But maybe we'll let her eat more salmon, not stress so much about how many tortillas she can have, and not stress about how much olive oil my husband likes to add when stir frying.  Next up: my youngest daughter's blood draw.  Just as traumatic, and worrisome, but we need to get it done!

How Do Holidays Change With LPLD: Advent

Aw, snap!  I bet you were expecting Christmas next!  But no, we are Catholic, and we save our Christmas celebrating for after December 25th and spend the 4ish weeks prior preparing for it.  We space out our decorating (this year the first weekend we set out advent calendars and outdoor lights, next weekend we get other indoor decorations and nativity sets, the next weekend is a tree with lights, and the final weekend we'll put ornaments on it), we light up our Advent wreath every night with dinner, we sing songs about the coming of Christ (but not His birth yet!), and we do readings every night from the Bible showing how Christ's birth was foretold throughout the ENTIRETY of that holy book.  None of which is impacted by LPLD!  Hurray!

But we also start making cookies for gorging ourselves on after Christmas.  And we have Advent calendars for each of the kids, which are usually chocolate.  How do we manage that?

Luckily I found this neat Advent calendar house at a German Christmas market:

It's gorgeous and a little flimsy (we glue on a few doorknobs every year), and a little crunched for space with two LPLD girls, but we've made it work so far.  This one seems pretty similar.  I can fit a small toy (either a finger puppet or a tiny ornament for Monica's own little Christmas tree in the playroom) and two small pieces of candy into each drawer and voila!  They have a special thing to do every night through Advent, just like my other daughter who doesn't have LPLD and gets a store bought Advent calendar with a chocolate for every day.  Everyone ends up pretty happy!  I've also seen neat toy-based Advent calendars which also seem like a good LPLD option.  For us, though, we like being able to just use the same toys every year, and not add to the toys which are already taking over the house!  And, honestly, I think the candy is important when compared with my other daughter's chocolate.

The back bell-shaped plate is all LPLD safe goodies!

And then cookies!  I love to have a huge variety for me and my husband, and so I like to make quite a few kinds for my LPLD girls, too!  Here are links to what I'm making this year:

meringues (with a few mini chocolate chips or one chocolate chip per cookie)
gingerbread folks (sprinkles are fat free!)
self frosting (vanilla) drops (from St Nicholas day)
peanut butter cookies (new!  I'm trying these for the first time this year!)
maybe pumpkin cookies, too!

LPLD gingerbread houses are pretty easy, too! Graham crackers with fat free candy held in place with fat free frosting

What LPLD ideas to you use for this time of year?