May 5, 2008: Nineteen Months Old

I’ve heard that the stretch right in the middle of the second year is one of disequilibrium. What this means for a toddler caught between one and two is that what you see is not what you get. The pistons are firing, the connections snapping into place, but still, you cannot get your hands or feet or parents to do what you command. You are an engineer in the making, still fumbling with the controls. All you want is to master all the small and wondrous details of life. And so, you work, work, work at every new challenge skittering across your attention. All the while, you skirt the threshold between accomplishment and frustration, between pleasure and fury. 

First thing in the morning, you squat down on the bedroom floor in the midst of a clutter of sneakers while I am getting dressed. You work those shoelaces with a diligent intensity I assume you inherited from your father. Quietly you mumble, “loop,” and “ya-ces” as you try to loop the laces. You have not figured out even the first step of accomplishing a bow, but you do watch me intensely every time I tie anything in the house, from tightening my sweatpants to trussing a turkey. But clearly, my actions are not some training video. We run a hands-on apprenticeship. You will not stand for me to repeat a task slowly or even to explain it. You grab, push me away, and hunker down to practice repeatedly until you manage to tie only yourself in knots. That’s about the time I open the cabinet where the stickers live.

You do want to help. That’s one thing I appreciate. When I pull out the bowls and measuring cups, you sidle up and squeeze yourself under my legs. “Mama! Mama! Up, up!” If I hand you a wooden spoon and let you stir, you are on cloud nine. When you catapult the oats and applesauce across the linoleum, you want to assist me on the cleanup. You need your own rag, your own broom, a swipe with the vacuum, a peek into the garbage. You toss balled-up socks into the laundry basket when I am folding them, then decide you want to figure out how to tuck them together yourself.

All the things you have seen us do hundreds of times, thousands now, you have decided should be within your repertoire. This includes reprimanding yourself when you meander into forbidden territory. In the bathtub, you have taken to standing up, touching the water faucet ever so delicately, looking at me with a very grave expression and saying, “no, no,” then sitting back down with a satisfied grin. You are pleased as punch at how well you obey yourself.

This need to master has revved your vocabulary into overdrive. You want to repeat and practice every word you hear. Nursing you before bed has become an exercise in extended mammary patience. Throughout the lullabies, you stop nursing every few seconds to repeat a new or perhaps a familiar word you’ve just heard me sing. You say it over and over until I stop singing and say, yes, yes “dale,” Eliot. A dale is like a valley” (I hope it is, anyway). Then you nestle back in for another quiet nurse until you pop up with “God” or “beluga” or “home,” grinning in delicious pride at your accomplishment. I may have to take up humming.

You have started picking up people’s names and using them when you are simply thinking about them. After your Gramma Lolly headed back home following her recent visit, you looked up at me every so often and asked, “Ga?” With your hands up, you gazed around, as if I had hidden her behind the bathroom door. I can see you are becoming aware of the delights of a social circle with a wider diameter than the distance between your mommy and daddy. Now that camp is gearing up and we are new groups of kids and grownups are showing up in our neighborhood, you are transfixed by the comings and goings of people you are trying to classify and befriend. Various pickups trucks and a green ATV shoot around camp, and you are forever taking off down the driveway to see who it is and what excitement might be underway. Most everyone makes a point to stop and holler a big hello (though I suspect what you would really like is a shot behind the steering wheel). Several of the summer staff members from last year have returned, and you have already fallen back in love with Jesse from Indiana. The first moment you saw her, you walked up to her, rammed your hand into hers, and gave me a curt “bye bye.” Now, I spend the evenings not only responding for the 473^rd time that Daddy is up in camp and working, but giving you the same story when you ask for “Das-sie.”

I try to find new ways to describe and explain the countless details of our daily life about which you are so curious, and which to me are so mind-numbingly mundane. For a good part of my adult life, I have prided myself on maintaining an extensive vocabulary. Even in the throes of milk-brain, I conscientiously attended to my linguistic flexibility by reading widely and keeping a dictionary handy. Your parroting illuminates just hobbled my spoken vocabulary truly is. I may keep volumes of words and etymologies – with the help of two ancient years of ancient Latin – tucked into the dusty recesses of my brain, but who would know? I talk like a surfer. I hear my rad-liness in you. Outside when you are zipping down the driveway and wobble for a moment on an uncertain edge, you holler, “wo-o-o-ah!” It’s the same “woah” you use when you drop a banana chip or your wagon bumps over a particularly gnarly trench in the road. This woah is not to be confused with your (my) response to the roar of military jets running exercises over Pike National Forest or, say, new sticker I just affixed to your belly. For such occasions, you gaze, google-eyed, and say, “wow!”

At nineteen months, it is no surprise you find yourself out-of-sorts when you simply cannot get the lid off the spice jar or the tricycle to move off the pile of rocks where you parked it. You need a few more months – and probably years – before you gain a sense of equilibrium between your repertoire of skills and the tasks you want to achieve. I’m sure that moment will be fleeting, too. Until then, we can work together on developing a colorful array of words you can use to express your frustrations as well as your joys. Stuff’s sometimes a drag, little dude, you know? But, hey, it’s all good.

April 13, 2008: Wheat Thinning

You know how you hear about day-care centers that have banned all things peanut from their charges’ lunch boxes because of that one kid who might have an allergy? You know how you roll your eyes at the hysteria of elementary school principals forbidding homemade cookies on birthdays because some toxic residue might make its way into the snickerdoodle batter? And how you always wonder why that poor kid’s mother didn’t have the sense to breastfeed him when he was little, and didn’t she know better than to feed him Cheetos and Nutter-Butters before he had even cut his eye-teeth?

Well, I am That Mother. And Eliot, who tasted nothing but mother’s milk until he was six months old and has yet to be introduced to the wonders of chocolate, seems to be That Kid.

(Requisite warning to the weak or prudish: Allergies involve an array of mildly grotesque bodily functions. Proceed at your own risk.)

For the past six months, we have been on a convoluted and frustrating journey into the inner world of the digestive tract. It began just before Eliot’s first birthday, which our little family celebrated in the company of a ferocious stomach virus. Ever since those two weeks in the fall, nothing has been the same with Eliot’s poor little system. Loose stools and stinging tush for the weeks following his first birthday led us to discuss matters with Toby’s sister and dad – both MD’s – as well as our own family doc. Most said, “Oh, generally infants have a harder time digesting after a bad stomach virus. Just eliminate dairy for a few days, and it will get back to normal on its own.” Okay, no problem. Dairy eliminated. A week, maybe two. No change.

Then Doc suggested giardia. As you are probably familiar, giardia is the boogeyman used to reign in straying children during forced weekend marches on national forestland. Giardia, a parasite commonly found in untreated stream and lake water, is the result of local fauna pooping in the watershed. Giardia likes our warm, sweet systems. They hunker down and start making little giardia-sitas as soon as they find their way in. Because we have a crazy dog who spends significant quantities of time frolicking in the lake and stream, and our camp is undoubtedly covered in the varied poops of geese, bears, mountain lions, elk, rabbits, and coyotes, it makes sense that Fenway’s fur might harbor some ovum. So, Eliot’s poop was tested six ways to Sunday. And lo, no giardia. No e-coli or other measurable parasites or bacteria, either.

Our family doc shrugged. “He might just have toddler diarrhea.”

I started talking to friends. The more I discussed matters, the more I discovered an epidemic of food allergies among the little ones in my circle. Jessica has a daughter, now four, who had suffered an intolerance to eggs as well as a few other unknown foods as an infant. She somehow just “grew out” of her allergies by the time she was three. Then Jess had a second child last spring. The baby steadily lost weight after her birth. Jessica religiously eliminated every possible allergen from her diet, but her breastfeeding infant continued decline. She had to switch to a prescription infant formula costing her $50 for a two-day supply. Another friend spent years traveling to specialists and clinics around the country to figure out why her son was not absorbing nutrients and growing. She calls her son, now four, her “little peanut” because he’s such a shrimp. (Check that out! Two allergenic food used as descriptors for small physique. Curious.) She never did discover what he could not tolerate. A third acquaintance eventually received a diagnosis of “leaky gut” for her preschooler. She has decided to go back and receive a graduate degree in allergies and immunology, so extensive was her education during her family’s search for answers.

When discussing GI issues, most of these friends have asked about Eliot’s face. It’s a sweet face, sure, but I have always feared Eliot would grow up thinking his name was “Oh, What Rosy Cheeks You Have!” Since he was born, Eliot’s face has been topped by those two glistening cherries. They are not naturally shiny, however. They are scaly, sensitive, and warm. The A&D ointment I put on them gives them that polish. And now, my friends are suggesting that Eliot’s rosiness is, in fact, eczema. Possibly a histamine response to the proteins in cow’s milk (or eggs, or wheat, or peanuts, or shellfish, or. . .?) making its way through my milk into his rebelling system. And who says a little cold medicine in your breast milk won’t hurt your baby?

We moved to a new family physician, who found that in the three months since Eliot’s first birthday, he had lost a pound. Despite the fact that Eliot was eating heartily and actually nursing more than he had been at a year, his weight had dropped from 24 to 23 pounds.  Doc ordered a whole rash of tests on all the members of the family. He suggested Eliot and I give up dairy, eggs, nuts, and soy. The other common allergens – wheat, shellfish, corn – he argued were not as likely in our case (who knows why), and anyway, he did not want us so limited we would not receive adequate nutrition. I also visited a pediatric GI specialist up in south Denver who ordered another round of stool and blood tests on Eliot. The GI guy concurred with the family doc about what foods to eliminate.

My new-found plan in hand, I headed over to the health food store in the Springs. I loaded up on rice milk and egg-free cookies. I bought a hefty tome on food allergies in children and boned up on how it all works. For the next two months, Toby and I wrote down everything that passed into Eliot’s or my system. We also wrote down the general time and consistency of everything that passed back out. Eliot and I quit yogurt and string cheese cold turkey, replacing them with, well, cold turkey. And avocado. And bananas, homemade sweet-potato bread and apple slices. Oatmeal replaced French toast, curried chicken and brown rice took the place of mac and cheese. Eliot now screeches for the broccoli on my plate instead of the pizza on Toby’s. I don’t even think he remembers what pizza is, poor kid.

Why didn’t we just get Eliot a skin-prick test to determine the culprit, you ask? In the world of children’s food allergies, blood and skin tests are notoriously inaccurate. To make matters more Byzantine, it turns out “allergy” and “intolerance” are totally different things, medically speaking. Yet they can appear identical. Stomach upset, eczema, stuffy noses, and vomiting can be a histamine response to an allergen (think egg protein = bee pollen). Conversely, they can be a result of the body lacking some key enzyme or absorption mechanism that it has not yet or may never develop (think eating peanuts = serving up the Kentucky bluegrass in the front yard for a salad).

The elimination-and-challenge approach is the gold standard. You remove the suspected allergenic food entirely from the diet for at least a month. Doc suggested two or more months, just to be safe. Then you slowly re-introduce, or “challenge,” each food over the course of a few tortuous days. During the entire time, you are supposed to note changes in stools, skin rashes, tingling lips, respiratory variations. If you get any reaction during the challenge phase, you eliminate the food again. If not, then you can let the kid finally get her French-toast or PBJ fix. Then you go on to challenging the next food. Needless to say, this all takes the patience of Job. Especially when your husband is sitting next to you munching on a cheese quesadilla.

So, we eliminated. And we challenged. We discussed the mushiness and stinkiness of poops and we took copious notes. For three months. And? You guessed it. No change.

“He might just have toddler diarrhea,” said the fancy-pants pediatric GI specialist with the Denver office and the $30 co-pay. And this, after nearly $1500 in tests and two grueling drives up over the mountains at sunrise to get to his only available appointment.

Okay, so “toddler diarrhea” is supposedly some quasi-medical term for undiagnosed wet, frequent poop. So, how does Dr. Denver fancy-pants explain that Eliot’s diarrhea was worse when we challenged dairy, eggs, and peanuts? And I mean worse.. Up-all-night-screaming, poop-stinging-pus-covered-diaper-rash-sores worse. And the face. A pimply, peely flare-up of those sweet, rosy cheeks. That sure looks to me like a major histamine response to some GI invader.

A diagnosis of Toddler Diarrhea feels like a free pass. “Let him eat whatever he wants. He’ll be fine.”  And to look at him, sure, he’s so vibrant and energetic. This is not some malnourished child, you’d think. He is right on track. See how he’s learning to say “tractor” and “please?” Look at how he can stack five blocks and drag the cat around the kitchen by the tail! Toddler Diarrhea says, “You’re off the hook, mom.”

But at some point, it has to be acknowledged that no matter how much food is going in, if the digestive tract is thickening up and rebelling, the nutrients are not actually staying in. At some point, it also has to be acknowledged that physical growth is mental and emotional growth. If Eliot is not absorbing nutrients, he is not getting the building blocks he needs to develop. Not just in stature. I mean, to grow his brain, his heart, his vision, his entire, miraculous being. And the one who has to do the acknowledging is me. Eliot’s mommy. That Mom. The one who fills her days with this little person. The one who knows something is not right, and something has to be done about it. Because no one else will.

At Eliot’s eighteen month checkup, we found Eliot had reached 25 pounds. Good, but not good enough. Even Doc acknowledged that a kid should have a net gain of more than a pound in six months. And while we have discovered a few of the culprits – eggs, peanuts, and dairy – Eliot still has not had a solid stool in several months, and the bottom third of his face looks like a chemical peel gone bad.

It seems we are on the brink of eliminating wheat next. Oh, horrors, as my gramma says. Wheat’s the worst of them all. We live in the United States of Wheat. Pasta, crackers, banana bread, breakfast cereal, soy sauce, lunchmeat, the scrumptious coating on sweet n’ sour chicken. How can I even take Eliot with me to Baby Boot Camp for the next couple of months? Those kids swarm like pigeons when they hear the rustle of a snack bag. Bunny grahams and pretzel sticks litter the floor, and the kids hoover up any tidbit they find in their paths. I have already told the other moms about the hidden dairy in goldfish crackers (even Original Flavor!), and they have elected not to bring them without me having to ask. But how can I ask them not to bring Wheat Thins? Cheerios? Am I supposed to expect them not to rely on these staples of the toddler diet when it’s not their kids with the problem? And let’s be honest. How am I really going to do a proper bicep curl if I’m chasing after Eliot to make sure that isn’t a Triscuit clutched in his damp little fist?

I guess I am That Mom. The one asking the other parents to check ingredient lists, or better yet, she’ll just take care of bringing the snacks. The one making a cloying appeal to the other kids who are gazing mystified at the ginger-amaranth crisps that pass for cookies, wondering what happened to their vanilla wafers. That Mom, reluctant to accept an invitation to a neighbor’s house for dinner even if she explains what the family can and cannot eat. The friend may slip, because, really, who has time to cater to some mom’s obsessive needs? And why is that mom still breastfeeding her 18-month old, anyway? And it’s not like Eliot has real allergies or anything. Isn’t not like his throat closes up and she has to jab him with an epi-pen. Can’t that mom just lighten up and let her kid’s diet and immunities develop as they should? Doesn’t she know keeping him in some purist straightjacket will only make it harder for him to navigate the lunchroom, the supermarket, the food court when he gets older?

But he’s my kid, my slipping-sideways-off-the-growth-chart kid with the fire-red tush and the crackle-paint cheeks. My sticker-obsessed, sofa-scaling, king-kong baby whose favorite word right now is “alligator,” and who likes to eat the chick-peas out of the spinach curry with his fingers. And if I’m not That Mom, then there is no one to stand guard. I am the one who gets this awesome duty. To care for Eliot. To protect this little human from what is dangerous, and nourish him on what is sustaining. To make sure he has the best chance to grow fully into the person he is meant to become.

Dealing with food allergies is exhausting work!

April 7, 2008: Eighteen Months Old

Watching you scoot a whiffle ball around the living room with your broom or thwack my yoga ball with a wooden spoon, I come to understand the natural genesis of an entire sub-set of sports. Golf, baseball, cricket, hockey, tennis, billiards and lacrosse are all just variations on a theme. Mothers the world over should be credited with the development of most major league sports. We figured out a sure-fire way to entertain our toddlers with a minimum of resources: give a kid a stick and a ball, then sit back and relax.

We play outside for several hours every day now that the weather is getting warmer. You do two things right when you head outside: find a stick to carry with you wherever we might wander and start demanding your “buh.” I bushwhack through the dry grass searching out your mini basketball the wind has carried off in the night. Your stick search is a never-ending quest for the perfect fit. You are forever trading out for twistier or lumpier or muddier models. But no matter the heft or breadth, you are determined to keep one tight in your fist at all times.

Along our walks, you dig small trenches in the dirt or upend pebbles to see what lies beneath. You drag this appendage along the fence- posts and whack at large rocks and windows to see what sounds emerge. Sometimes, you seem to forget I am following you. Your basketball tucked safely under your arm and your stick trailing forever behind, you mosey on down the driveway without looking back. I wonder how far you might go. You seem to cover a few more feet every day. Someday soon, I won’t be able to see you at all.

For now, though, you are always within eyesight and a few long strides. And you still seem to need this protective proximity. When you fall, which occurs about once every two and a half minutes, you holler out for “hep,” and mama comes to the rescue. I offer a finger for balance, brush the dirt off, and give you a squeeze. You squat to retrieve your stick off you go, after your ball which has inevitably bounced off into the weeds.

Last week, we went to the doctor for you eighteen month checkup. In the waiting room, I tried to set you down in the kid zone. “No, no. Up,” you said, keeping your legs in a vise-grip around my torso. I pointed out the music table, the tot-sized chairs. I sat down on the floor and you leaned in, resting your head against my chest while keeping a close eye on the three-year-old girl making her way through the toys. With your arms wrapped around my chest and your legs burrowed between mine, you watched.

I handed you a truck, and you hugged it like a teddy. I gave you a train car, and you wandered out from between my legs but kept one shoulder pressed against mine. Once the little girl started putting balls through the door of the toy house, you felt secure enough to venture out. Within moments, you were so absorbed in play you did not look back. But I stayed put anyway. This is what I can do to make your world wide-open and welcoming. Home base is always safe. Always right here and watching, as long as you need.

If someone were to ask me, “What is Eliot like?” I would have to say, “How much time can you spare?” And I would eventually find myself running out of words to give shape to the expanse of you. “He is such an interesting person,” I might wrap up lamely, trying to capture the intensity of my meaning in my voice, my gaze. “Really, you’d love getting to know him.” Secretly, of course, I know we are the luckiest of all, your parents, sharing our days with you, watching you add color to our world from your own unique palette. 

You are active and busy, and you are also gentle and quiet. You focus for an eternity on fitting a lid on a jar in a corner by yourself, and you kick a ball repeatedly at me until I stop what I am doing to play with you. You take amazing risks, and you hold back. You giggle hysterically when Fenway licks at your cheeks, then dissolve into hiccupping tears when I make you put your sun-hat back on. You run shrieking through the house inviting daddy to give chase, and you curl up on the sofa with a small mountain of books. The range of your emotional vocabulary and the breadth of your personality stretch a little wider every day.

And still, you drag the certainty of me around with you, tight in your grip, and hold the shape of your daddy tucked up safely under your arm. No matter how far you wander.

 March 30, 2008: Some Beach, Somewhere

I thought we were going to Florida. That was the plan, anyway. I didn't find out till I was on the road crammed into a 15 passenger van with a gaggle of in-laws that we were actually staying in Alabama. Alabama? That's a state I rarely even remember exists. But here I was, husband and baby and a suitcase full of gauzy beach-wear in tow, on my way to a week in that stretch of the deep south. The gulf coast is the gulf coast, after all, and who can really tell one state's grain of sand from another?

We dipped toes in the surf, lazed around the condo with a symphony of crashing waves to lull us into bliss, and let Eliot quench his insatiable thirst for play by scaling and flirting with three fun uncles and two unstoppable grandparents. Eliot collapsed like a felled tree into his pack n' play every evening by seven and stayed zonked till dawn. We played a staggering number of games of Carcassonne in the evening. The Hettlers' Belgian foreign exchange student, Zoe, used her European advantage to take subtle, slick control of the medieval countryside on several startling occasions. I was humbled.

Eliot gets his first taste of McDonalds breakfast at the Denver airport. He's a tad too eager for my comfort.

Uncle Adam and the bug lay the foundation for their Taj Mahal.

Uncle Billy's a tickling master.

Suzuki method with Uncle John.

Eliot voices his concerns about the plan for an afternoon bike ride. . .

. . . though Grandpa Bill assures me he does begin enjoying it somewhere down the road.

Dodging waves with Gramma Carol and Grandpa Bill is the best.

Chillin' with the clan.

Best buddies!