First Week of Preschool

Caroline's first week at her new preschool was a great success! She is doing well adjusting to her new surroundings and is already becoming attached to her teachers, Lindsay and Ashley. I sent a long email to the preschool director explaining the basics of celiac disease, Caroline's symptoms, and what to be careful of in terms of accidental gluten exposure. I have a feeling that a version of this letter is going to follow Caroline to every new classroom, summer camp, etc that she attends from now until college. The preschool director was very appreciative of the letter, and showed it immediately to every teacher that has any contact with Caroline. She also reviewed the classroom art supplies (glues, paints, play dough etc) and verified that everything was gluten free except for the play dough, and she ordered gluten free play dough for Caroline.

I made my first foray into gluten-free cupcake making (using a boxed recipe but eventually I want to start making my own gluten free flour blend to use for baking). I read online that a good suggestion for birthday parties / classroom parties etc is to make a batch of cupcakes, freeze them, and then you can just thaw one and frost it when needed for a party. Of course before I froze them I had to get my taste-testers' approval. Although it was a mix, it called for some not so standard ingredients like buttermilk and almond extract. The flavor and texture both got a thumbs up from all three of my taste testers ;) At first I thought Caroline was planning to just lick all the frosting off (which would have been somewhat ironic), but after she did that she chowed down on the actual cupcake and ate the whole thing!