I’m sorry if it appears that I’m stuck on the subject of eczema, but while I’ve been writing during the past few days about our battle with Malachi’s eczema , I have been amazed at all the emotions it has brought out in me.  I’ve been bawling over the keyboard like crazy.  One of the biggest emotions I’ve felt is thankfulness!  (Is thankfulness an emotion?  I sure am feeling it!)

Those were some tough years.  Many days we felt like we were fighting a losing battle.  We got little sleep.  The kind of sleep you get when you first bring a newborn baby home from the hostpital?  We got that kind of sleep for three years.  After Malachi turned three he finally started sleeping through most nights, only occasionally waking up scratching and crying.  He slept the most peacefully if he was in our bed, so that is exactly where he slept until about a year ago (he’s five now).

At about age 3, the eczema gradually began to clear.  It started healing first on his head and slowly moved down his body until now he mostly just suffers from sores on his legs.  How I wish he didn’t suffer with eczema at all anymore…but WOW am I thankful that it is “only” on his legs now.  He is not nearly as miserable as he had been.  And he’s now able to sleep the night through and feel healthy and rested.

As I’ve been writing about our fight against chronic eczema, I’ve sifted through his baby pictures so that I could post one or two for you to see the severity of his problem.  I’ve just not been able to post one though.  Those pictures are painful for me to look at and I’m sure they’d be painful for you to look at too.  The poor guy.  What a tough kid. 

BUT, because looking at all his baby and toddler pictures reminded me of how far we’ve come and made me so incredibly thankful to be at this point in our battle, I decided to go ahead and give you an idea of what we’ve been fighting against.

This picture was taken on Mother’s Day ‘07, almost three years ago when Malachi was about 2 1/2.  It’s not a super close up pic, because I just couldn’t post one that was.  But, you get an idea of how the rash covered his face and neck (also arms and legs, but you can’t tell that in the picture).

Incidently, while we were fighting Malachi’s eczema issue, we were simultaneously fighting a battle of stubborn-ness with our then five year old Elias.  There wasn’t an easy remedy for that issue either, but I think we’re on the winning end of it now.. 

And now here we are, three years later…

I am overjoyed with thanks that Malachi is feeling so much better!!  Is it any wonder I can’t stop kissing those soft cheeks?! 
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What are you thankful for this Gratituesday?  Write about it on your blog, then come link up with us here.  If you don’t have a blog, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for!

If you are linking up a blog post for Gratituesday,
please copy and paste the following link into your post!  Thanks!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

(If you’ve been reading through my Journey to Healthy Eating series, some of this information will be a repeat for you.  I’m just wanting to make sure any new people know what I’m talking about!)  Also, this is a really long post…I had a lot to say. 
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If you’ve had a child suffer from eczema, even a mild case, it can be incredibly frustrating to helplessly watch them suffer.

Our youngest son, now five, developed severe eczema when he was just two months old.  We allowed one round of an oral steroid and half a tube of cortisone cream before learning that his condition was chronic and the drugs, if they were to get rid of the eczema symptoms, would be a permanent part of his life.  So would be the terrible side effects of the drugs if we continued to give them to him. 

So we chose to stop.  We refused to give these life altering drugs to our baby.

We were learning more about nutrition, drugs, whole body health at that time.  Through MUCH trial, error and prayer…we found a few things that helped him.  There was NO quick fix because it has been a matter of healing his body from the inside out.  Some of the things we did helped immediately (like changing detergents and soaps), but overall healing is STILL taking place five years later.  I wish I could tell you otherwise. 

I want to share these ideas with you…not because I’m just SURE they’ll help your child.  Every child and every eczema case is different.  Plus, I’m not a doctor…I’m just a mama. 

And please no matter what your opinion is about drugs, can you please not leave a comment chewing us out because we didn’t give them to our son.  I’ve had enough criticism about our choices to last…forever.  Thanks.

Remember, we learned that eczema is not merely a skin issue…there’s much more to it than that.  But, here are the best changes we’ve made and the best products we’ve found to help our son Malachi with his eczema symptoms:

1. We began eating organic, natural and unprocessed foods whole foods.  You’ll read more about all of this (all over my site), specifically in my Journey to Healthy Eating series.  We specifically kept Malachi away from grains and sugar for quite a while to help his immune system and to help with his digestion.
2. We found this fragrance and dye free laundry detergent from Shaklee to be the best and only one that would not make his rash worse.  Many people have suggested that we make our own detergent, but I have yet to see a homemade detergent without borax as an ingredient, and I’m not convinced that borax is okay for our skin.
3. We use only pure coconut soap from Tropical Traditions.
4. Lotion in general just doesn’t offer much comfort for Malachi’s dry itchy skin.  IF we use lotion, we use this fragrance free lotion from Tropical Traditions.    We’ve found that straight coconut oil works much much better.  Read here about how you can get FREE coconut oil through March 17!
5. We started supplementing him with Black Current Seed Oil that we got from our chiropractor.  Malachi takes it orally, plus we open up a tab and rub the oil onto his worst sores.  This has been a HUGE help for his overall healing (digestive system healing) and I’ll talk more about it in my Journey to Healthy Eating series.
6. Speaking of chiropractors, we try to take Malachi in for regular chiropractic adjustments.  If his body is in alignment, he does better.  Plus, our chiropractor focuses on nutrition, allergies and needed supplements.
7. We limit the baths.  The water seems to dry his skin more, so once or twice a week is his limit.  Faithfully after a bath, we slather him with coconut oil.
8. He wears mostly 100% cotton clothing so his skin can “breathe” better.
9. We clean the house either with good old fashioned water and vinegar…or Basic H from Shaklee.  We have NO toxic cleaners in our house anymore.  Read here about all of the soaps and cleaners we use.
10. Allergy testing…and desensitizing.  Our chiropractor tested Malachi, then one by one he desensitized him for any allergies that he was showing a sign of.  We were surprised that as he got older, different allergies showed up that hadn’t when he was tiny.  It never hurts to try again.  (P.S.  The desensitizing process is super simple and painless…just a little different if you’re used to conventional methods of doctoring.  Email me if you want more info about this.  Not that I completely understand it.  But it did help Malachi quite a bit.)
11. I can’t say enough about this one:  SUNSHINE.  We completely avoid sunscreen because it makes Malachi break out terribly.  However, the sunshine makes his rash SO much better.  Summer is our favorite time of the year.  He always feels so much better in the summer when he’s in the sun.  We just make sure he’s in the sun long enough to grab some good vitamin D…but not long enough to get a sunburn.  We call it the “in the sun…out of the sun…in the sun…out of the sun…” method.
12. Prayer, prayer, prayer.  God is the ultimate healer and we are so thankful to know that He loves Malachi even more than we do.

Ultimately, we have found that eczema or not…using high quality products in our home for cleaning and eating high quality unprocessed foods is best for all of us!  We are so thankful for the changes we’ve made for our family…and for the relief Malachi has found as well!

Now that Malachi is five, his eczema is SO much better.  The worst area is on his legs, and we’re hoping that once the sun starts shining a little more regularly again and he can be out in it…his legs will clear up more.  His cheeks are now SO SOFT that I CAN’T stop kissing them.  And he just lets me…great little accommodating guy that he is.

If you know of any other great, natural remedies for eczema, please leave a comment letting us know.  I’d love for this post and all the comments to be a great resource for parents looking for answers!

P.S.  If you’re interested in trying any of the products from Tropical Traditions I mentioned in this post, click here to read about how you can receive a free book from TT about the great benefits of coconut oil.

I was JUST getting ready to post about how we spread this coconut oil on Malachi’s skin to help soothe his ezcema.  And here they are offering a FREE jar!  Go get one!!

There is a $16 minimun order required for your purchase, so click here to read about all of my other favorite and highly recommended products from Tropical Traditions.  ALSO, if you are a new customer and you enter my referral number:  5342568 during the check out process, you’ll receive a FREE copy of their Virgin Coconut Oil Book, explaining it’s many benefits (plus over 80 recipes too!).

Scroll through this page to see their weekly specials.  I noticed their Organic Coconut Flour is on sale!  Yummy!

If you missed them, please catch up on
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

I wish I could tell all of you about the “magic bullet” that cured Malachi of his eczema.  There really is no such thing and it’s been a huge struggle for us throughout this journey.  I’ll tell you more about some of the things we’ve tried and what’s (mostly) worked tomorrow in a separate post, but I WILL tell you here and now that we have NO REGRETS that we pulled him off the steroids and cortisone creams.  Especially now that we’re on the better end of his eczema battle, we can testify that you do NOT have to resort to drugs to help your child’s eczema…no matter how severe a case it is. 

Even though we were just at the beginning of our healthy eating journey, we had learned enough about food, drugs and overall health to know that eczema is NOT a skin issue.  Skin is an organ.  When something is going wrong inside our bodies, toxins have to go somewhere.  In Malachi’s case…they appeared to be “coming out” through his skin.  (This was explained to us both by our chiropractor and by another homeopathic doctor that we took Malachi to.)  If we were to just treat the rash as a skin condition, those toxin inside of him would be suppressed in his little body…and then what?  It was making him miserable, but at least his body was trying to rid itself of toxins. 

Ultimately, this meant that there was no quick fix for Malachi.  We were going to have to get to the root of his problem and figure out what was going on inside of him before the rash would go away.  It was going to be a process.

We faced incredible opposition to our choices and took all kinds of criticism because “we were allowing our child to suffer” by not giving him the drugs.  People couldn’t believe we weren’t “giving him anything for that awful rash”.  From doctors to strangers, we felt like we were being looked down upon for “letting” our child look and feel like he did. 

It was a very painful time.  I wanted to scream at people, “Do you think we LIKE watching our baby suffer?  Do you think we don’t KNOW how bad he feels?  Do you think we’re just IGNORING his pain?  We’re NOT!!!!!  We are SO not!!  We hate this!!!!  We HATE it!  Don’t make this worse for us!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I know people didn’t mean to make it worse…I was just weary.

And so, we began learning about food and nourishment.  We began learning more about how our bodies work.  We began learning more about toxic cleaners and detergents. 

And we began changing almost everything about how we ate, cleaned, stored our food, cooked our food.  So many changes.  Because of Malachi, we felt quite an urgency to make a lot of changes all at once, but wow was that very overwhelming! 

I’ll write a separate post tomorrow to explain several of the ideas that have helped Malachi because if you have a little one suffering from eczema…you don’t want to wait on me to get through with this series to hear about it!

But this post is already getting long and I have yet to tell you about my hospital stay because of asthma complications and how much I learned about myself and about true health and oh yeah…many of you are waiting to hear about how I finally gave up drinking Pepsi…

 More Coming Soon…

So many of you are wanting to know more about some of the things we’ve tried to help our son’s severe eczema and I don’t want to leave you hanging because that’s just not nice.   

So, be watching for more of Our Healthy Eating Journey posts very soon…and in the meantime…here’s what we’ll be eating this week:

Sunday, March 14
Oatmeal, pears
Leg o Lamb, potatoes, carrots, gravy
Alphabet soup , honey whole wheat bread and butter

Monday, March 15
Simple soaked pancakes, blueberries
Pizza Casserole, tossed salad
Meat and cheese Burritos, pineapple-orange slushies

Tuesday, March 16
Scrambled egg sandwiches, oranges
Skillet meatballs with BBQ sauce, ranch potato wedges, carrot sticks
Oven baked chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas

Wednesday, March 17 (Join us for the little Green Project!)
Green smoothies, toast
Black Bean Taco Salad, apples
Spicy avodado dip, corn chips, fruit and kefir smoothies

Thursday, March 18
Mini apple pies, sliced cheese
Cheeseburger macaroni, steamed carrots
BBQ deer tenderloin, rice and veggie stir fry

Friday, March 19
Breakfast burritos, clementines
Grilled cheese, tomato soup, carrot sticks
Homemade pizza, fruit

Saturday, March 20
Whole wheat sourdough biscuits, turkey sausage gravy
Leftover buffet
Beefy vegetable soup, banana muffins

Take note:  In the recipe drop down menu across the top of my site, you’ll notice that I added a GLUTEN FREE page for your convenience!

If you haven’t already, please be sure to sign up for the Prayers of an Excellent Wife book giveaway brought to you by FBS Books!  Giveaway will be closed Monday night.

AND, make plans to join us for the little Green Project on Wednesday!  Share anything that you’re doing that is green (eating greens, saving green, going green…anything green!)!  Read more about the little Green Project here!

Find more menu planning inspiration at Organizing Junkie.

Fresh Organic Produce:

20 pound boxes of Organic Apples – $19.60 per box
Pink Lady, Fuji, Granny Smith
$0.98/pound

22 pound box of Organic Pears – $21.00 per box
D’Anjou
$0.95/pound

3 pound bag of In Season Organic Pears – $2.70 per bag
Choice variety in stock
$0.90/pound

5# bags of Organic Potatoes – $18.00 for 10 bags
Russet
$0.36/pound

3# bags of Organic Onions – $1.80 per bag
Red
$0.60/pound

Check out their other great produce selection here.

Great Deals on Groceries:

Fresh Jumbo Eggs – $4.54 for 2 dozen or $24.53 for 12 dozen
2 dozen or 12 dozen
$2.04/dozen

Braggs Organic Apple Cider Vinegar – $3.75 per single bottle or $40.65 per case
Single 32 ounce bottle or Case of 12 bottles
$3.38/bottle

Crofters Organic Fruit Spread – $2.70 per jar or $29.20 per case of 12
Strawberry, Wild Blueberry, Other Varieties
$2.43/ 10 ounce jar

Stahlbush Island Frozen Organic Vegetables – $4.60 for 3 bags or $16.60 for 12 bags
Broccoli Florets, Green Peas, Other Varieties
$1.38/10 ounce bag

Stahlbush Island Frozen Organic Fruits – $8.50 for 3 bags or $30.85 for 12 bags
Red Raspberries, Marion Blackberries, Other Varieties
$2.57/10 ounce bag

Food for Life Sprouted Tortillas – $2.10 per package or $22.85 per case
Ezekiel Sprouted Tortillas
$1.90/12 ounce package

Azure Farm Hard White Wheat – $3.50 for 5 pounds, $10.80 for 25 pounds, $23.80 for 50 pounds
5 pound bag, 25 pound  bag, 50 pound bag
$0.43/pound

Eden Foods Organic Diced Tomatoes – $1.80 per single can or $19.80 per case of 12
With Roasted Onion, With Sweet Basil, With Green Chilies 
$1.65/ 14.5 ounce can

Natural Value Dijon Mustard – $1.45 per single jar or $15.75 for a case of 12
8 ounce jar or case or 12 jars
$1.31/jar

Gluten Free Deals:

Namaste Mixes – $6.10 for single package or $33.20 for a case of 6
Biscuits, Pie Crusts and More, Perfect Flour Blend
$5.53/48 ounce package

Food for Life Brown Rice Tortillas – $2.10 per package or $22.85 per case of 12 packages
Six count per package
$1.90/12 ounce package

Non-Food Deals:

Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent – $13.85 for single bottle or $50.45 for a case of four
Free and Clear
$12.61/100 ounce bottle

Seventh Generation Paper Towels – $8.75 for single package or $40.95 for 4 packages 
White, 2-ply
$8.75/8-roll package

Seventh Generation Bathroom Tissue – $6.75 for single package or $31.55 for a case of 4
100% recycled paper
$6.75/12-roll package

Bikleen Fabric Refresh – $3.75/16 ounce bottle
Lemon Thyme, Lavender

Biokleen Dishwashing Liquid – $3.70/32 ounce bottle
Free and Clear, Lemon-Thyme

Heirloom Seed Packages – $1.60/25 seeds
Varieties of tomato, bean, lettuce, peppers and so much more!
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Click here to see more of Azure Standard’s Sales for March!

What is Azure Standard?

Azure Standard is a food delivery service specializing in offering top notch, organic and natural products.  These folks provide my family with amazing organic produce and groceries each month.  I am constanly blown away by their prices, especially for organic produce.  Usually their organic fruits and vegetables are LESS EXPENSIVE than the non-organic produce I can find at my local grocery stores.  They are SUPER easy to work with and incredibly nice.  Read all about Azure Standard and what they stand for here.  Are they awesome or what?

Who does Azure Standard deliver to?

Azure Standard has truck routes delivering to Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming!  Plus, they are continuing to expand as much as they are able.  If you’re from North Texas, read here about how you can encourage a drop point in the DFW area!  And, if you’re from any of the above mentioned states, click over to read their delivery schedule specifics.  Flip through the pdf file to find your state and see if there’s a drop location near you.  If there isn’t one, you may be able to call and set one up.  (That’s exactly how I did it a few years ago…I just called and set up a delivery drop point in my town!)

If Azure Standard doesn’t have a truck route to my area, can I still order?

Yes!  If you are unable to be a part of a co-op/truck delivery route…you can still order (most items) and have them delivered UPS or by mail.  They deliver all over the U.S. and the world (if you make special arrangements).  Shipping costs may be high, but it’s worth a check. 

How often do the trucks deliver?

Azure Standard delivers once each month.  I place my order on a Thursday…I pick it up the following Tuesday.  (Every route is different, that’s just how it works for me…but talk about instant gratification!)  We all meet our truck in a designated location, unload our boxes and bags (squeal with delight over our pretty fruit and bags of oats), load our vehicles and go home.  It all takes about fifteen minutes.  Amazing.  Here’s a little field trip I took my readers on a few months ago so they could pick up my Azure Standard order with me…

Is there a minimum order?

Yes…if you’re right along the truck route, there is a minimum $550 order…but that’s total, for everyone who is ordering.  If you get a few families involved, your minimum is met pretty easily. 

Your individual order must also be at least $50.  If your order is under that amount, just combine it with a friend. 

Their prices for these organic foods are incredible!  Are there any hidden fees?

Hidden, no.  But some states (like mine) are subject to a delivery fee.  I DON’T mind the delivery charge at all.  If I didn’t have Azure Standard, I’d have to drive 2 hours one way to get food like this, and then the food prices would be a LOT higher.  My delivery charge is less than my fuel cost would be to drive the 2 hours, plus the food costs less.  I happily pay the delivery percentage on my order.

Hey, I can’t see the prices on their website!  How can I see their prices?

Call them and set up an account.  (541-467-2230)  They’ll give you an account number and password, then you can log into their site and see all their prices.    You can also fill out the form here to request  a free catalog.

Do I have to order in bulk?  I don’t have much storage space.

You can order in bulk, but you can also order small amounts of a product.  I love this feature!  You can order 50 pounds of oats, or just five pounds.  You can order an entire case of organic ketchup, or just one bottle. 

Does Azure Standard have a nice selection of gluten free food?

Yes.  Click here to see some of their gluten free products…then click around looking for your other favorites. 

What am I forgetting here?  What other questions do you have about Azure Standard?

If you would be interested in having Azure Standard deliver their awesome food to you in North Texas, you need to email penningtonfam at yahoo.com to let them know of your interest.   They are trying to see how many people may want to take advantage of their delivery route as they make plans to possibly expand.

If you live in the DFW area, give Dianne Pennington a quick email to say YES PLEASE bring a truck my way!  Tell all your friends in the area to do the same!

I promise you will LOVE the benefit of having Azure Standard deliver to you!

This information won’t apply to many of you.  If Azure Standard doesn’t deliver to your area (and I’ll be listing those areas soon), feel free to nod, smile and click over to a post that means a little more to you and helps you in some way.  (Like my Chocolate Chip Brownie recipe, which means a LOT to everyone I’m sure.)

But if Azure Standard DOES deliver to your area, I’m hoping to encourage more of you to take advantage of Azure Standard’s wonderful services if you can.  I’ll be posting sales and special features as often as I’m able.  Maybe weekly (if they have anything cool in their bargain bin), or just monthly as they update their produce and sales.

Azure Standard isn’t paying me to say all of this (although if they want to, I’d be okay with that).  I just LOVE Azure Standard and want to spread the wholesome food love.

Heya…just wanted to edit this post to clear up any unintended miscommunication about my use of the word “poor”.  I am very sorry if any of you found this offensive.  I in NO way want to communicate that I think being poor is a bad thing or that I look down on people who are poor.

The thoughts from this post really just came from the fact that my family has a lot of people in our lives that love us, but don’t always understand our frugal lifestyle.  If we aren’t careful about how we communicate our “lack of spending” to people, they take our actions as meaning that we “don’t have enough money” and they feel sorry for us or go buy things for us (things that we were intentionally not buying, not because we don’t have the money but because of choices not to spend). 

Does that makes sense, or did I just make it worse?! 

Recently my husband and I were talking about my torn jammies. 

Great conversation piece, huh? 

It’s just that in this post I had mentioned that I *only* had two pairs of jammies and one of them was literally falling apart.  So, I finally bit the bullet (yum) and bought a new pair.  And then I wrote, “When Malachi saw my new jammies he exclaimed with happiness then asked why I got new ones (cause it’s a big day when anyone gets something new around here).”

This led Matt and me to talk about how that may have sounded.

Does that sound like we’ve been too poor for me to buy new pajamas for myself?  Does it sound like buying things we need, like new jammies, is just a far off dream? 

Oh that poor family.  Can’t even afford to get new pajamas for the missus.

I really and truly hadn’t bought new jammies for myself because for Pete’s sake, we are a throw-away-society and I don’t feel the need to throw away the old and buy new things until I really, really need them.  That’s why I hadn’t bought new jammies for myself.

Do you ever feel like, because you are carefully watching your pennies and working hard not to spend money on things you don’t need, and trying to get a good deal on the things you do need…that you come across to others as looking…poor?  Or cheap?

If we aren’t careful, we might come across that way.  Are we the poor family with the stay-at-home-mom who has to make all of their food from scratch and cut every one’s hair herself and put her kids in hand me downs and grow a garden?  Are we the poor family who can’t afford  family cell phones and frequent eating out and new furniture and new vehicles?

I think it is super important for anyone who is frugal minded to come across to others as people who are happy, cheerful…downright FINE! 

Avoid using the words “can’t afford” or “not enough money for…”.  You truly may not be able to afford the subject you’re talking about, but those words portray a “poor me” attitude, literally.  That attitude will not encourage others to want to spend wisely…it may instead cause others to feel sorry for you and try to avoid being in the state you’re in.

As we talk with others about what we have or don’t have and about what we do or do not spend our money on…I think it is important for us to share in a way that inspires others to want to be wise with their money also.  Share your frugality in a way that sounds exciting and attainable!  Say things in a way that lets people know that a frugal lifestyle is in no way boring. 

Saving money, spending wisely, being frugal…it’s a joy!  It’s fun!  It works!! 

Spread the love!
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This post is linked to Frugal Friday.