Totally BAD

So for those of you who read about Wednesday's fiasco (see Oops below), get ready for the real horror of the week.

Daycare called again today. Apparently taking my advice they have Evie and one other child with a milk allergy sitting at a table by themselves. While eating lunch the teacher noticed that Evie's eyes were getting red and watery and then a few minutes later she broke out in hives and her other eye swelled up this time but it was worse than last time. This time she was having difficulty swallowing and was drooling on herself so her doctor's office said use the epi pen and take her to the ER, which we did. The epi pen was amazing and allowed her to get back to normal in seconds but did start to wear off as we waited at the ER.

Once we got to Children's ER they gave her steroids and some benadryl to try and continue to positive effects of the epi and prevent a replapse. We also had to stay there for several hours to make sure nothing more severe happened when the epi did wear off (usually wears off in 4 hours or less). She had a really rotten afternoon, as you can guess.

This time, daycare gave her a canned 'graduates' meal that we gave them that definitely does not contain milk/milk products. They also initially said they gave her mixed fruit and mixed veggies with margarine on them. For those of you who don't know margarine does have milk in it. When we first found out about Evie's allergy, I also thought margarine didn't have milk in it (although I read the ingredients BEFORE serving her anything with margarine) so I can kind of understand not knowing that. However, a little while later daycare called and said that Evie had not actually gotten her plate of veggies and fruit before this incident occurred which leaves us with only a few options:

1. Evie is allergic to something in the food she did eat that she has never had a reaction to before
2. Evie stole some food from the other little kid
3. Evie got some real milk in her soy-milk only sippy cup
4. margarine got on her plate or food off someone else's hands who touched the margarine and then her stuff (good gravy, I hope not because then she will never be 'safe' if it is a really severe contact allergy)
5. they got confused or fibbed in the chaos and Evie was given veggies with margarine

Evie has been eating their veggies for months now with no reaction but this was her first dose of them after having a serious reaction to that cheese pizza she got a hold of (and since she was wearing a white skirt that day and it has pizza sauce ALL over it, she probably ate more than just a bite--apparently the teacher was a sub/floater who didn't review the class allergens list?!?!!?). Anyway, her body probably hadn't cleansed that milk out letting even a little dab cause an even worse reaction.

So my friends, THIS is actually worse than my last post in which I said my worst fear was realized. When the allergist gave me the epi pens he was like 'you should never have to use these but I'll give them to you anyway just as a matter of procedure'. She had two bad reactions in 2 days resulting in one trip to the ER and lots of medication, not to mention chaos and missed work for mommy and daddy and stress on everyone.

I honestly don't know what to do. With a child who has a serious allergy like this I don't want to just start over somewhere new, because most likely any school that even has an opening right now for her is either ridiculously expensive or not great (otherwise other people would be using it). I also still mostly-trust most of the people where she is, so it's kind of better the devil you know than the one that you don't. HOWEVER, I can't handle this kind of stress and fear. What happened today was really serious, vastly more so than what happened Wednesday and I don't know what we'll do. I do believe in my heart that no one thought they were giving her milk/dairy, but if they aren't able to keep track of what has dairy in it, that won't be enough. It's just not very feasible to switch daycares with little or no notice. I'm so worn out from this I can't even be properly pissed off right now.

In other news, Evie still has two teeth coming in--they made an appearance about 2 weeks ago and haven't done much since. That will bring her grand total up to: 6 whole teeth. She also has her new mary jane styled crocs with OSU jibbits all ready for the game tomorrow.

Happy slightly (by one hour) early birthday daddy and Laurie!

Big Oops

The thing I have been fearing most at daycare with Evie's move to a new room (where they sit at table and all eat together--no high chairs to keep them separated) happened yesterday at lunch. Evie got a hold of something, probably cheese pizza since that was the meal for the day. However, no one saw exactly what happened (which may be more aggravating than the fact that she ate the cheese in the first place) so we can't be 100% sure but it seems very likely.

The end result was Evie swelling up like a marshmallow afterwards and getting red and blotchy with a rash and hives. When daycare called she apparently looked really scary horrid, but they gave her Benadryl so she looked slightly less horrific when I got there to pick her up. Here she is with still swollen partway shut eye:
I think this picture looks bad but it looked even worse in person, and I'm not just saying that. It really did look weirder and more horrible in the flesh. So the bad news is that Evie ate milk something or other and had a bad reaction to it (duh, that's why we emphasize that she is milk allergic!) but the good news is I think daycare will probably not make this mistake again. I am not sure if folks didn't 100% believe me that she has a SEVERE allergy or what, but she really does have a very serious allergy which we also need to take seriously. Most of the time when I tell people she is allergic to milk they assume I mean lactose intolerant or something more mundane. This doesn't look too mundane though, does it.

It really stinks to take your child in healthy and have her returned to you looking like that, particularly since I think this was perfectly avoidable. Yeah, she may catch the flu or get bit by some kid or even punched in the noggin' and those things happen, but she should not have access to stuff that could cause this kind of a reaction. Hopefully we can go a while before something like this happens again (or never have it happen again would be perfect). Ok, enough of that rant!

So after getting Evie home, I went to send a quick email to co-workers to let them know Evie was fine (after dashing out in a hurry) and while doing this, Evie:

• opened the back door
• walked down the steps of the deck
• ran into the yard and picked up a wood chip which she was thinking about eating...

as I ran out the door having my second heart attack of the day. I cannot believe how fearless she is. Note to self--always lock back door so Evie cannot open it--ALWAYS! It's like you always here too--I just had my back turned for a second (a minute or less) and that's when something always happens. This incident however left her unharmed and un-disfigured so that's something anyway.

Otherwise we are SOSO here. Evie has a pretty extensive vocabulary, including talking about Liam all the time (a boy in her class who gets into lots of trouble). She is also the teachers helper in telling the other kids 'No' and she has taught her classmates the word 'hot'. She loves frozen waffles for breakfast (dairy-free of course) and when the toaster pops she wants them right away. So we always say 'hot, hot, hot' to get her to wait and she thinks it means (I am assuming based on her usage of it) that hot means 'give me more food, darn it!'. I am trying to get her to understand hot means wait or it isn't ok to eat yet, but we'll see. She calls fake soy cheese hot all the time for some reason, and clearly it isn't.

Outside

Evie woke up this morning demanding juice and to go 'side'--or outside. So we spent a lot of the day with nana and grandpa outside, first at the zoo (she held mommy's hand even though she was in her vroom, vroom:
She and daddy make awfully silly looking ground hogs!And then she ate a Popsicle right before we left. Yummy! On the way home we went past the Powell water 'park' and stopped by. Evie thought the water was a little too wet, so she spent a lot of time on the playground:She was pretty fearless when it came to the slide. Daddy went down with her a few times but then she was all about going solo! She got really bad static in her hair which was pretty funny.

Evie switched to the toddler room at daycare and was there for her first full day on Friday. She had an awful time being dropped off but they said she did well during the day and she seemed totally happy when we picked her up. The new room is more group-activity focused and they take naps on cots (we were sure that would be a total fiasco but apparently she just needed a little back rubbing attention and then she napped for about 2+ hours. If being in the more 'grown-up' room makes her more grown-up, we are in for trouble--she is already so talkative and mobile--next she'll come home potty trained in a day and too good for her diapers!

Evie's eye is all better and PQ is back to mostly normal so disaster averted from last weekend! Here is some more evidence as to why babies should not dress themselves as well as Miss sassafras on the computer and double-spooning it at dinner:

What A Day

Today has been quite a day. Last night, Evie had a sleepover with Nana and Grandpa while mommy and daddy went to Shadowbox's late night show for free. When Evie got home she gave mommy a big kiss on the lips before BITING her hard. I had to give her the no biting talk and even without raising my voice or putting her down, she cried like I broke her heart. It felt awful but she really can't bite. I seem to be the only one she taste tests though. Then Evie and mommy went to a baby shower while daddy and grandpa and nana letterboxed.

The shower was at Graeter's and Evie had sorbet due to her milk allergy. Mommy left to help the new mommy put her gifts in her car and left Evie in her stroller with folks watching. When I came back, Evie's left eye was red, swollen and puffy. She kept rubbing at it and no one saw what happened so I kept watch on her and when it didn't get noticeably better consulted with her pediatrician who sent us to Children's Close to Home urgent care. I stopped by our house while waiting for the pediatrician's return call and found Pasquale getting sick all over his crate and acting funny. I tried calling daddy but his cell wasn't doing its thing right so grandma came hover to assist. At this point I was trying to figure out if both Evie and PQ needed to go to their species appropriate urgent cares and panicking a smidgen. Evie won out on who got to go to the doctor first because she's human and her doctor called back first.
We took Evie to urgent care and they put the fluorescent eye drops in to make sure her eye didn't have anything in it. The doctor didn't see any scratches or anything so most likely she had an allergic reaction to something that came into contact with her eye. Since we were in an ice cream parlor and she has a severe milk allergy, I think she may have gotten a smidge of some drop of ice cream she picked up somehow into her eye and the doctor said that could have done it. She has never had a contact reaction before but I guess this means she can't be around milk stuff at all which is scary because everyone else eats and drinks milk products--yikes!

Meanwhile, Pasquale has continued to be sick all evening and daddy is taking him to the vet in the morning. Hopefully it is just a bug and not something super serious. Mommy dropped off daddy and Evie who stayed with nana and grandpa who had been called in to watch PQ while we were at urgent care and mommy and grandma went to get Evie's eye drop prescription filled. The first 2 pharmacies were closed so we drove over to a 24 hour pharmacy that had a 15 minute wait. To kill time, we stopped at Rita's frozen custard and got a much needed snack (but since daddy loves Rita's and we didn't think it would travel well, we thought we would keep it a secret). We came home, put the drops in Evie's eyes and then I noticed my cell phone was missing. Daddy called it and the nice girl at RITA'S answered, busting mommy and her sneaking out to get italian ice. Figures.

Evie cried and was crabbier than normal (allergic reaction in eye + urgent care + eye drops + 3 teeth coming in, including a molar = unhappy baby). PQ threw up on the carpet when mommy wasn't paying good enough attention and now we are about all ready for bed!

To recap our life most recently before today, we went to the fair last weekend with the Imboden's and Gary which was really fun until Miss Thang had a melt-down. She loves Irene and Alaina:
My cousin Melissa is coming to OSU in the AU and was here for orientation, hanging with Evie during a dinner break:Evie wasn't sure about Melissa at first but they are buddies now.

And my final recap will cover yesterday. We went to with Grandma to the Ballantrae water park in Dublin where Evie played in some of the fountains. It is a cool place, and best of all, it is FREE!
She's still a little shy of the spitting water but she did play in the smaller fountains like these. The large waterfall (not pictured) totally freaked her out though.

When Babies Dress Themselves

Can you tell what's wrong with this picture?
You talking bout me?