Psssssssssssst!

Don't tell anyone - this is just between you me.

We gave Grant cheese pizza last night. And he ate it.

You see, this is a big deal at our house. It's been well over a year that Grant has been on the eat-nothing-you-could-possibly-find-in-a-store-or-that-is-simple-to-make diet. Since the first few months, he's been positively fantastic about it, better than we could ever hope or expect him to be.

Previous to the diet, he didn't even eat pizza. He wasn't interested in it in the least. But, in the past few months he has wanted pizza when we had it at home. Even more recently, he's been saying "pizza" when we pass by pizza places. He even throws in a "yum yum" for good measure.

But last night we were all on the way home from Cassidy's basketball game when we passed by 2 pizza places and heard the familiar words from the back seat. We had just had that "it's too late to cook anything but what can we pick up that's somewhat healthy, not to mention, what will Grant eat" conversation. And then, in a knowing glance that only 16 years of marriage can make, we looked at each other as if to say "it's time". We're essentially done with standard chelation as it has stopped being effective at pulling out metals. He's still taking various supplements and we've stuck to the diet based on the allergy test results. After a year though, it's time for the double-blind study, the test and response.

And so, we stopped at the 3rd pizza place, our favorite - Sal's Pizza. Grant's response might as well have been that of Christmas morning, he jumped out of the car and ran to the door. Somehow he knew he wasn't going to be denied this time. He looked like one of those cartoons where the boy starts smelling something incredible and it lifts him off the ground and toward the prize. Once home, we were just as excited to see what he would do as he was to actually get to pull the pizza slice out of the box and put it on his plate.

He picked it up and bit in, savoring the bite like we savor the chocolate at La Fondue, eating with a slow passion like the first kiss after a long time apart. Grant continued to eat purposefully until it was all gone, including the crust. Our amazement in watching quickly broke, however, when Owen started to cry. "He can't eat that. It's going to hurt him!" Tears flowed as Grant's younger brother pleaded, "No, Grant, stop eating that!" We did our best to explain to Owen that it was OK and Grant was not going to be sick (we hoped). He took little solace and then turned his eyes up to us and said "I want Grant to talk like us." If ever a 5 year old showed love for his 8 year old brother this was it; we were witness to it and it was truly a memorable moment.

So now we wait and look for signs, changes, behaviors. We won't tell anyone, except you, so that we can get honest and unprovoked reports of positive or negative changes from his teachers and therapists. If there is nothing negative, we'll continue to introduce other items from the banned list, slowly and carefully. Out there, somewhere on the horizon, a boy finds popcorn, ice cream, and birthday cake and he smiles.