For months now I have had a hunch that our family doctor believes I am in denial about my three year old whirling dervish. I think that he thinks that I must not want to admit that her daily tantrums are simply due to her strong temperament or (worse) to my ineffective discipline methods. As a parent of young children himself, he has sympathized with me and laughed along with me but in the end I have felt like a failure as a mother - because I can't get my little girl under control. I have questioned him over and over whether her temper could be caused by some physical discomfort and he has humored me over and over by testing for this and for that. Every test result has yielded a negative result - until today.
A dear reader recently suggested food allergy testing after viewing my last post so I reluctantly phoned the appointment line and requested our doctor to send in lab orders for testing. After piano lessons yesterday we stopped by the clinic and I shuttled the children across the snowy parking lot in seven degree weather. My little girl bravely bore the sight of a needle in her arm as we tried to keep her mind on the prized band-aid. When it was over I could not tell if she was laughing or crying - but it was in fact a laugh followed by, "That willy huwt!"
When the clinic called today I was fully expecting another negative test result so the news that she actually has an egg allergy caught me by surprise. I have spent all evening thinking about how hard it has been to get her to eat eggs at all and how much we have pushed them, thinking that some protein in the morning would help stabilize her.
In the short term we will continue this chart we started last week with the coveted Lalaloopsy doll as a prize. I do hope there is a correlation here between the egg allergy and her behavior and that a solution has been found. Time will tell. In the meantime - where do I go from here? Can anyone tell me the best website for more info or the best egg-free baking book out there?
