I can't be sure, and I don't think I will ever really know, but I am pretty sure Little Girl was corned last week. I don't know how it happened, or when or where, but from the moment she woke up on Saturday until the moment she woke up on Monday, I was trying to find where this little beast had stashed my real daughter.
It sounds crazy - or at least it did to me when I first heard that a food reaction could cause behavior changes. But I have seen it in my own child, and heard about it in children and adults alike. I saw the 180-degree shift in Little Girl's behavior after we removed corn from her diet, and the huge leap in development that happened at the same time. And, in retrospect, we all bore witness to the downward spiral that was this last corn explosion. I've seen it, so I believe it.
As a baby, she got the reputation of being a "diva" and the title of "cryingest baby in the family." We went along with it at the time, and just kind of grinned and bore it. But knowing what we know now, we feel a little bit guilty about that. Things could have been different. Wouldn't anyone be clingy and weepy if they were in a constant state of pain? Wouldn't anyone have a short fuse if they felt pukey all the time?
Words were slow to come; she finally said her first consistent words around her second birthday. While she crawled and cruised from about 7.5 months, she didn't walk until 13 months - around the same time we discovered and addressed the corn issue. Then, apart from typical toddler meltdowns, things seemed to be developing pretty well. I don't know when the snowball started, but at some point the behavior went downhill. The coughing while eating began again. Only when she started puking were we able to look back and see that things had been rolling downhill for awhile.
After the blowup it took about 2 weeks for us to remember what a delightful child our Little Girl is. I mean, she really is a great kid. So she has some personal space issues. So she tries to ride her baby sister. But she really is a funny, loving, bright kid. Her language, which has developed at a really good clip since December, just exploded. She started naming her colors. Counting. All stuff she couldn't do before, and I attribute the leap in development to her body finally being able to do something besides fight corn.
And then, this weekend happened. Meltdown after meltdown. Tantrum after tantrum. Hour after miserable hour of fighting, bargaining, yelling, limit-pushing. Time outs, time ins, breaks, you name it - if it was in our parental repertoire, we tried it. It was a losing battle. "Mama's sleeping, let's not wake her up." Lost her mind. "No ice cream for breakfast - you can have it for dessert for tonight." Lost her mind. "Put the knife down, you don't want to cut yourself." Lost. Her. Mind.
And I'm not talking a little crying jag. I'm talking 20 minutes of screaming, crying to the point of gagging, snot in her hair, and walking into walls. Every single time she was redirected. If it wasn't for the previous week or two, I would have chalked it up to normal toddler stuff. But, seriously. This is not my child.
And then this morning she woke up with a smile, a hug, and the ability to follow instructions. My angel is back.
I don't know the culprit, and I probably never will. But I am SO nervous that we are going to have to be even more restrictive, and I just don't know how we would do it.
Corn, corn, go away.
