This Will Be: An Adventure

We had our annual company picnic this week at work, and since the kiddos are in daycare on campus, we decided to bring them along for the festivities. Most of our coworkers hadn't seen them since they were 6 months old, so it was lots of fun seeing their reactions to our big, walking, talking bundles of energy. The kids quickly gravitated toward the bucket that was holding cans of soda, and spent the better part of an hour splashing around in the ice water. They even recruited some other children, and everyone ended up soaking wet and giggling.

When they weren't dousing each other with freezing water, they were bopping along to the tunes spun by our resident DJ. Both of our kiddos love to dance, but Peanut is more of an in-the-living-room kind of dancer, whereas Little Man can't seem to contain himself whenever he hears music. He just has to dance!

One sunny Sunday afternoon (two weeks ago), Little Man and Mama (Sylvia) fell asleep on the couch just minutes before we were planning to walk out the door to run some errands. Ever the go-getter on the weekends (ha!), I went ahead and took Peanut out with me to take care of our to-do list, leaving Little Man and Mama napping at home.


Two hours and one frantic phone call later, I arrived home to this:


The culprit? A tiny smidge of hummus Little Man had requested from Mama.

So now we're on the road to finding out what, exactly, Little Man is allergic to. We saw our pediatrician earlier this week, who said that from the pictures (thankfully I happened to have our camera with me) and how we described it, she figures he was "near anaphylaxis." She confirmed that we should have taken him to the ER instead of just dosing him with benadryl, washing him with cool water, and waiting it out (which is what we had done, per the on-call pedi's instructions). After impressing upon us how very serious his reaction was, she prescribed Little Man an epi pen and sent us home with a stack of information and a DVD that shows how to administer the epi pen.

Little Man's appointment with the allergist is next week, so Sylvia and I are combing back through our collective memory and assembling a list of all the foods Little Man has ever seemed to have a reaction to. Turns out-- as we found out when Peanut had her allergist appointment yesterday-- that they won't test for any foods the child hasn't already demonstrated an adverse reaction to. They tested Peanut for chickpeas and sesame because of Little Man's reaction to the hummus, but wouldn't test her for peanuts or anything else. We want to get the biggest bang for our blood-test buck, so we need to make sure the list for Little Man is as comprehensive as possible.

In the meantime, it's one foot in front of the other. Sylvia is still quite shaken by the events of that day, and my stoic nature is, I think, disconcerting to her. Add that to the fact that we're both processing a hefty dose of mommy guilt (her for having fed him the hummus and me for having had a carefree attitude regarding ingesting large amounts of potential allergens while pregnant and breastfeeding), and the result is two exhausted and emotional mommies.

I'm sitting in the nursery, enjoying a few minutes of alone time* while my wife feeds the kids dinner. With all the stress and exhaustion (and attendant bickering), I regret to say that sometimes I forget what a wonderful wife and mother she is. It is soul-satisfying to hear her in there with them, making them laugh and eat their carrots. Sylvia, my love, for everything... THANK YOU!

*I took two cranky, teething, post-daycare babies to the doctor by myself this afternoon... I SO needed the break!