Sweet Sour

 Food allergies are no fun.  But we're pretty used to them by now.  Good thing, since some of Little One's really serious food allergies will probably be with us forever.  But one of the many mysterious things about food allergies is that some of them are sometimes outgrown. 
Like somewhere in there on a molecular level, there's been this teeny, tiny little immunological UN conference and a peace deal finally gets brokered between the Histamine Republic and the Empire of Soy, for example.  Isn't it nicer when we can all just get along?!  Yes.  It is.  But since those little proton-sized newspapers are too small for us to read, there's no way to know if such a deal has been reached except to throw the two sides together, take cover, and see what happens. 
Since Little One's person is the battleground, it's best to do it in the doctors office, and this is what we call the Food Challenge.  Sounds serious, huh?
In a food challenge we take a miniscule amount of something we expect, suspect, or just hail-mary hope a person has stopped being allergic to, and we have them eat it.  Then everyone sits and watches all intently for 20 minutes or so.  If everything seems ok, we give a slightly bigger bit to them, and again watch and wait.  Sometimes, like when Little One tried egg last year, there is a reaction and the whole thing is called off.  But if all goes well, they eat a little more and more until they have had a large enough "dose" without reacting that we can safely say they are no longer allergic. 
Little One hasn't passed a food challenge in a while, but last week we went ahead with Her new allergist and tried to see whether She had made peace with lemons yet.  And, as it turns out!!

Yep.  That's right!  She passed!
Little One is beyond excited.  She asked me to take pictures and a video to send J immediately.  She stopped people in the hospital hallways to cry out joyously, "Guess what? Guess what guys?! A-scuse me, guess what I CAN HAVE LEMONS!!!!! Is. That. So. Great?!" And sang about Her love of lemons all the way home in the car. 
To celebrate, we fixed special dinner of salmon with lemon dipping sauce and lemon-pepper roasted veggies. 

We haven't tried other citrus yet, but we will and excepting pineapple the allergist feels confident that She will be ok with that as well. 
Lemon is an ingredient which tends to sneak into the strangest places and is rarely labeled.  So if I could have chosen an allergy from Her list to cross off, this would have been it.  I'm almost as excited about it as She is! Yay for Little One! We have one less thing to worry about.
And from now on, when life gives Her lemons, She can just eat them!