A Beautiful Winter poem.

' WINTER '

a poem by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

SHIT!
It's Cold!!!

Goofball AJ

AJ said, "I can do this until it hurts... for 100 minutes".

Cleaned up AJs room today.

Then he decided to move his couch to block his closet doorway and put every pillow we've got in there. I guess he's nesting? (That other kid is Haley- a neighbor kid who helps me out during the week for an hour so I can get Austin's homework done)

Snow Day

Hey Boys...We have snow...Owen got all all snow covered when he went outside. Papa had to shovel!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy New Years!

In the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

This is probably boring as all hell, but here's an article that Austin's work in the peanut study contributed to.. The only part I really care about is highlighted in red below: (Dr. Jones is Austin's specific doctor in Arkansas and Dr. Burks is his doc at Duke.)

J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2008 Jun;121(6):1344-50. Epub 2008 Apr 14.

Oral tolerance, food allergy, and immunotherapy: Implications for future treatment

References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

A. Wesley Burks MD^{a, ,} , Susan Laubach MD^a and Stacie M. Jones MD^b

^aDepartment of Pediatrics, Division of Allergy and Immunology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC

^bDepartment of Pediatrics, Division of Allergy and Immunology, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children's Hospital, Little Rock, Ark

Received 31 August 2007;

revised 1 February 2008;

accepted 1 February 2008.

Available online 14 April 2008.

The lumen of the gastrointestinal tract is exposed daily to an array of dietary proteins. The vast majority of proteins are tolerated through suppression of cellular or humoral responses, a process known as oral tolerance. However, in approximately 6% of children and 4% of adults in the United States, tolerance to a given dietary antigen either is not established or breaks down, resulting in food hypersensitivity. Although food allergies can result in sudden and life-threatening symptoms, their prevalence is remarkably low considering the complexities of the gut-associated mucosal system. Suppression involves signaling by an array of nonprofessional antigen-presenting cells, dendritic cells, and regulatory T cells, as well as lymphocyte anergy or deletion. Several factors, including antigen properties, route of exposure, and genetics and age of the host, contribute to the development of oral tolerance. Although the current standard of care for patients with food allergies is based on avoidance of the trigger, increased understanding of the mechanisms involved in tolerance has shifted focus of treatment and prevention toward inducing tolerance. Data from early-phase clinical trials suggest both sublingual and oral immunotherapy are effective in reducing sensitivity to allergens. In this article we review the mechanisms of tolerance, discuss aberrations in oral tolerance, and provide information on novel prevention and treatment paradigms for food allergy.

Grace's Birthday Party

Austin's school friend had her birthday party at the science museum. Austin made her birthday card... and AJ made a card, too!

Florida Snow!

It was like 30 degrees this morning! Holy crap! If you look closely, you can see ice on our grass..

Video from Lorikeet Landing

Birds of a Feather

Today AJ had his bird class at the zoo. It was only an hour, but he did a craft, ate a snack, had a story, met a Screeching Owl named Gizmo, fed a Toucan some grapes, and fed a bunch of birds live mealworms! Afterwords, I took him to feed the Lorikeets. They were so hungry today that AJ was SWARMED with them. And to end the visit, he got a little Parrot figurine and named it 'Gizmo' after the owl at the class.

Car Monkey

This is Nate swinging on the Dammit Bar in the car (that overhead bar everyone grabs onto when the driver takes a corner too fast)... It's grainy and poor quality cause I had to grab the shot with my phone.. sorry!

This is funny..

This is Nate cracking up watching the video of himself in the crib.

AJ says 'hi', but is a bit under the weather..

Ozzy and Nate say 'Hi'- 2 Parts

Notice in video two when Nathan says, "Bugs? OHHH BUGS!!??!"

MTV Cribs...

Nathan has decided that it's fun to climb into his crib by himself and... well, see for yourself. (Looks to me like he's read for some cage ultimate fighting)

Brilliant Baby!

I think Nate's shirt says it all:

On this historic day...

The boys and I have been talking about why this day is so special. I tried to keep them interested by incorporating the thing most important to them.... Legos. This is the little lego project we created:

Snow In Tampa Bay Area? It May Happen Tuesday Night

Lucky us, huh?

Tampa residents last saw snow 32 years ago today.

Bittersweet...

This past Friday we gave Nathan his last bed-time bottle. We weren't sure if it would stick- if there was too much protesting, we were going to just give it back. So far there has been zero complaints from the not-so-little guy. So that's very likely the last we'll deal with baby bottles... Kinda sad, huh?

Also, AJ has started sleeping without pull-ups. He's had 3 nights in a row sleeping in his big boys with no accidents.

Busch Gardens #2

We spent the day at Busch Gardens. It was AWESOME! It was in the 60's and sunny. The boys had a blast. Their much older cousin Tim was visiting, and he met us there with his girlfriend.

We all took a ride on the Skyride. The boys played at the outdoor 'Treehouse' area. THEN, AJ got daring and tried the "Scrambler" and loved it. Austin, Nathan and I decided to stick with the less scary rides. The kids got eaten by a bunch of hungry, hungry hippos and touched a real snake..After all that, we got hungry. We ate $4 hot dogs. What a rip!

(Sorry these pix are all out of order and displayed in a shitty fashion. I tried to do it sequential and beautiful, but it kept getting hosed up)