More Thoughts on Boy

I thought that Tony's dairy allergy was fairly recent, but more and more I'm finding that I was actually pretty obtuse about realizing there was anything wrong at all.

While we were on vacation, my mom and I got to talking about Tony's allergy. See, I still held that while he had some symptoms coming on before I recognized it, it wasn't that bad nor was it for that long. But she reminded me about Tony's "chocolate dance." After he ate chocolate, he would go running and dancing around the room in this insanely funny routine that we actually named "the chocolate dance," it was so predictable. I always thought that it was just a kid quirk, because I mean really, sounds like fun, eh? And he wasn't hurting anything or looking all that upset himself. I'd forgotten about it entirely, actually, until my mom mentioned it. And then suddenly, the going-off about chocolate but not about other forms of sugar MADE SENSE.

And then it was one of those "come to think of it..." kinds of things...followed by another "come to think of it..." and another...as I realized, he's been congested most of his life, ear infection after ear infection, he was a trouble toddler and this was probably WHY. His allergy manifests for him mainly in a general level of pissed-offedness, hyperactiveness, and lack of impulse control that is only a little beyond the 'crazy toddler' level, so I thought he was just, well, harder to deal with than his big sister (who admittedly, was a PERFECT toddler).

And now I'm bummed that it took me so frigging long to realize that there was anything wrong AT ALL. Not so much that it took so long to figure out the allergy thing, I'm not beating myself up over that, I'm just upset that I lalalalalala'd my way through so many signs that there was SOMETHING up, and even after we had that SOMETHING pinned down, I didn't just trace it all the way back to toddlerhood in one "aha" moment.

I'm just feeling slow about it all.