You say po-ta-to, I say diet-ary in-toler-ance

The word from the naturopath is in, and it ain't pretty. As I've already discussed ad nauseum, we have to juggle plenty of special dietary needs here in Ninjaville, including dairy, wheat and sugar/fruit. Eager to make his mark in the family, Finn has decided to add his own meal-plan-crippling issue. The results of the "Carroll" test say that he can't have potatoes.

Now I'm no scientist, but I think I read somewhere (O Magazine?) that it's against the laws of nature, not to mention illegal in Ireland, for a boy named Finn to not eat potatoes. Oprah wouldn't lie about that.

When faced with this, I did what I always do in an effort to come to terms with grave news. I immediately went about trying to debunk it. I considered sitting him in a pot of potato salad, but mayonnaise doesn't come off easily with baby wipes. French fries down his pants would probably be uncomfortable too. So I scrapped those plans in favor of some good ol' fashion interweb research.

Turns out that the Carroll test is not administered by a lady named Carol, but rather was developed by a doctor named Carroll. He was a physician and electrician back in the olden days, the two disciplines apparently tightly intertwined back when both medicine and electricity were still considered magic. He developed a method for testing digestive intolerance that has proven quite successful among many of our friends' children.

Considering the track record, I'm willing to play ball. It would be easy enough to just eliminate potatoes from his diet, since he doesn't eat them, but the problem is that we also need to remove anything that is made from potatoes, distilled from potatoes or that went to high school with potatoes. This includes pretty much every ingredient under the sun. Luckily the only thing that he's eating right now is formula, so we don't have too many ingredient lists to scour. Unluckily the ingredient list for formula is about 4,000 items strong.

But if this clears up his perennial problem with boogersnots and helps him sleep better, then it will all be worth it. If not, then maybe I do need to find a woman named Carol, or Linda, or Diane to see if they've got any other tests we can administer.

In the meantime, here's a video of Finn eating his potato-free rice cereal that I'm sure you'll enjoy.

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Editor's note: I would like to take a moment to clarify one point from the last post. As I reread it, it occurs to me that I could have been misconstrued as whining about the Yankees having missed the first playoff run in eleventy-million years. I'm sure you think there's nothing worse than a whiny Yankees fan. I would argue that there are several things worse, including serial killers, the Beverly Hills, 90210 season 3 Christmas episode, and people that put pineapple on their pizza, however that's not the point. It's not me that's whining, it's Finn. And since this is his blog, I can't censor that. I'll try to teach him to be a gracious loser, I'll just need someone to teach me first.