On the second Thursday of every month (except December!) there is a women's church group meeting, called Elizabeth Ministry Gathering, that meets at the church of a few of my other mommy friends. Typically, I try to go to the meeting but have been very sporadic in those efforts the last several months. One of my goals (I'm not calling them resolutions because many of them are not "fixing" anything, but rather, efforts to simply do better in particular aspects of my life.) for 2010 is to get out more amongst other moms and also to try and attend each month's EM Gathering. I keep telling myself I need these Mommy Timeouts.
I made it to January's EM Gathering and was well on my way to making it to this evening's meeting too until a few minutes before I planned to shovel my dinner in and make my way out the door. That is when the Mysterious Milla Meltdown occurred.
Milla has meltdowns all the time (yes, I know, two-year-olds do that - so save me the "That's-totally-normal" lecture, please.) so the fact that she was having a meltdown was not out of the ordinary at all. What was strange though, was how she was conducting her tantrum. A few minutes before dinner was ready, she walked her little shirtless self into the laundry room, left the light in there turned off, closed the door, and sat down on the floor. A few minutes later she started screaming and crying. I made an attempt to go comfort her and try to bring her out but she was having none of it. She screamed when I turned the light on. She flailed when I tried to pick her up. She was not coming out of there. So I left and continued with cooking dinner.
A few minutes later, same scene, different position. Milla had gone from sitting on the floor to lying down on the cold tile floor. Let's not forget she was shirtless too, so I know she had to be cold because the laundry room connects to the door going to the garage and it gets cold, cold, cold in there.
She screamed to have the light turned off when I turned it on. She screamed answers to all my questions:
Me: Do you want anything?
Milla: NO!!!!
Me: Are you hungry?
Milla: NO!!!!
Me: Do you want to eat dinner?
Milla: NO!!!!
Me: Do you want the light on or off?
Milla: Light OOOOOOOFFFFFFFF!!!!
So I left her in there again. She would not come out for dinner. James, Reiss, and I all ate dinner without her while she sat in there letting out an occasional wail for goodness knows what reason. She didn't want to eat and we did ask several times while we, ourselves, sat, eating our own dinner.
Meanwhile, it was getting closer and closer to the time when I needed to leave to go to my EM meeting but I still planned on going. But the nervous mommy in me set in and the fear of all the "what if" scenarios would not stop nagging me. So I stayed home.
Just before all this happened, Milla had eaten part of a sucker given to her from Reiss's and her occupational therapist. Normally, we do not allow artificial dyes or flavors and we try to stay away from soy. While we are not as stringent with these things like we are with gluten and casein, we do allow exceptions occasionally. This sucker had all three of those things in it - red dye, artificial flavoring, and soy lecithin.
Now I know for people who are not familiar with this diet we are on, or for those who do know about it but do not put a whole lot of stock in it, it may sound ridiculous and downright paranoid of me to think that a little sucker would cause such a reaction in a child - or more specifically, my child. However, I have observed enough of my own kids' reactions to different foods to know that yes, something as trivial as a few licks on a Valentine's sucker can indeed induce such a reaction with one of my children.
Before I even allowed the occupational therapist to give Reiss or Milla the suckers, she volunteered the bag upfront so that I could check out the ingredients list. The list didn't have any glutenous or casein-containing ingredients on it so I said "what the heck" and made an exception, all while hearing that little voice inside tell me I shouldn't.
Next time I will listen to that little voice and maybe, just maybe, listening will result in Mommy getting a break that evening.
Lesson learned: Listen to the voices in your head.
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