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Even though Lea's speech has progressed to the point where almost anybody, I think, should be able to have a pretty normal conversation with her, there are still a few quirks that remind me what a fascinating process language development really is.

She has a few of the typical toddlerisms: "brung" for brought, "gots" for has. And she has the funny habit of somehow recognizing when an irregular past tense is appropriate, but rather than using the actual form, creates her own by stringing together at least two "-ed" sounds to the root-- "runded (fastly)," "wakeded (up)," "draweded (a picture)."

She's also really actively working on her vocabulary. Just today she asked us what "politics" and "stability" mean, and at one point she gestured out her car window, gasping "I just saw a skyscraper!" This being Abingdon, um, no she didn't. I asked her, "what's a skyscraper?" and she said, "Well, it's just the thing from a plane." The white line? "Yeah, the white line from a plane."

But the part that I'm really loving right now is her response to the fact that sometimes people pronounce certain words with an "ing" sound at the end, and some other times, those same words get pronounced with an "in" sound at the end. "I'm going to the store" and "I'm goin' to the store" both show up, probably with equal frequency. Somehow (probably because we are liberal elites who listen to NPR a lot), Lea has figured out that the "ing" version is the right one. And she overextends the principle. "It's broking!" is a frequent lamentation.

This morning, I was getting her dressed for a ride in the bike trailer, and she insisted on putting on her zip-up sweatshirt herself. Struggling to get the zipper started, she was sighing heavily and making all kinds of (familiar to me) noises of frustration. "What's the matter, kiddo?" I asked her. "Can I help you?"

"No! It's just! Ugggghhh! Why is it stubbering?"

"Stubbering?"

"It's just so stubbering!! It won't work!"

"Stubborn?"

She looked a little confused, but then nodded. "Yeah, stubberin."

She let me help her with the zipper, a good thing, too, as it put me in perfect position to gobble her up, which is what I wanted to do more than anything, ever. These years are the best of my life.

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Except, when they're not. We're still really struggling with Susanna's food/sleep issues, which may or may not be at least partly the same issue. (Someday, when it's all figured out, I'll find a way to put a Venn diagram up here.) The period of bedtime Thursday until 9:00am Friday was without question my lowest point of parenting ever. It was a horrible night. And actually, it didn't seem to have much to do with any digestive trouble for Susanna at all, just the cumulative awfulness and bad habits resulting from being woken by it so much in the past, I guess. And then, the real kicker is that MY sleep habits have changed over the last year or so too; my body seems to forget how to get back to sleep quickly once awakened at night, maybe because so often each wake-up has turned into a marathon of soothing, trying to soothe, trying trying trying anything to soothe, having to be ON instead of just semiconsciously nursing and depositing her back in the crib, which is what I always expected to happen.

So, less than 3 hours of sleep for me later, it was 6am and I was up, in the kitchen, baby wrapped around my calves, which is how I spent an hour trying to plan out how to feed this child according to the new plan advised by the pediatric gastroenterologist, and then the whole morning routine and the loudness and the neediness from both kids, and my body was just hating me, and then it was 9 and Susanna was showing signs of being ready for her morning nap, which she then decided to not take, when all I wanted in all the world was for her to TAKE A DAMN NAP so I could at least shut my eyes for 25 minutes while Lea watched Super Why.

And, I told her so. Or rather, I screamed myself hoarse. I don't need to go into detail about how counterproductive this was, and the domino rally of ugly events that followed. It was my worst Mom moment ever.

But, it's over. And we do have a plan, so that's good. The specialist agreed that all signs point toward an intolerance to fructose, but recommended trying a small amount of a new lower-fructose option each day to figure out what she can handle, at least in little bits. So far, grapefruit is a huge hit. Kid looooooooves her grapefruit. And it doesn't seem to hate her. About a tablespoon of blueberries seems ok too. Shredded spinach was less of a fan favorite, but didn't cause her any trouble. So we're getting somewhere.

We're also going to be testing for celiac disease, because sometimes fructose malabsorption shows up as a secondary problem caused by the damage done to the intestinal lining due to celiac. If that's the case, it tends to resolve itself very quickly once the celiac diet is observed. So right now we're in the "gluten trial"; two servings of gluten per day for three weeks, in order to make sure the blood test we do at the end of that period is accurate. We'd been avoiding a lot of wheat products because of the fructans, so this is the main change to her diet. Wheat all over the place. Little cheese crackers enjoy a similar reception to grapefruit chunks.

I don't even know what I'm hoping for. If her fructose problems are pretty significant and don't go away, that's a lifetime of having to figure out how to have a balanced diet with very little plant life involved. There's also a lot of research being done about highly increased rates of depression among the fructose-malabsorbant (it has something to do with tryptophan). But, otherwise, there's at least a little wiggle room; messing up the diet or accidentally having a few bites of a "bad" food isn't likely to cause anything worse than a bad bellyache. Celiac disease involves a much stricter diet, with all-or-nothing implications; even a contaminated utensil can make you really sick. But it seems to me that if you manage to be totally gluten-free, you can have a very healthy, colorful, varied diet. And I'd venture to guess that staying gluten-free is getting easier all the time, with so many new celiac-friendly foods on the grocery shelves every time I look.

Getting ahead of myself, of course. What else is new? Let me stick with today: today we rode our bikes to the Creeper trail, where Brian took the girls (in the bike trailer) on a long ride while I went to the Abingdon Friends meeting. It was lovely, and I feel like I belong there. We had a smiley lunch, a quick afternoon nap, time at the only tree-shaded playground we can find, and a relatively painless bedtime. I'm trying to let the rightness of my time with the Friends get me through these tough days-- I will seek peace wherever and whenever I can. And as a parent, I will make it a priority to reflect as much peace onto my kids' lives as possible. I have a wee bit of an anger problem, I guess, so this is a real task for me. Wish me luck.


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