OH NUTS!

Yesterday I was thinking that I have had such an amazing week! Brooklyn and I have been working on not fighting as much. When your child has an opinion about everything it's hard to get her to do simple tasks like putting on clothes, taking a bite of food, picking up a backpack, etc. So, this week has been great. I stopped nagging so much and Brooklyn stepped up her responsibilities, however simple they may be. I was telling Mike how great she's been so he suggested we go out for a treat.

When Brooklyn came home she picked ice cream so we headed to Golden Spoon. I know, frozen yogurt and ice cream are not the same things, but 5 year olds don't know that frozen yogurt is better for you and they can't tell the difference anyways. She got a Just Chocolate with rainbow sprinkles and I decided to get the Low Fat Peanut Butter Cup. All of the tables were taken inside so we walked across the parking lot to sit at the tables outside of Taco Bell. There we sat enjoying our non-ice cream. We like to sample each others and Taylor got to have some, too. It was a little windy and cold so we ate as fast as we could so we could hurry back to the car. I got to finish the last couple bites of Brooklyn's because she was too cold. So we got in the car and headed back home.

When we got home I noticed Taylor's allergies were acting up again. We just got over a bad case of seasonal allergies with her. We had to give her two breathing treatments a day with two different meds and thank goodness we got it all cleared up, but now she was showing symptoms again: flemy cough, congested, but runny nose, itchy, watery, red eyes, you know the bit. So I busted out the breathing treatment again (which I had just put away that morning). After that grueling process she didn't seem to be getting better. In fact, it was worse. She just kept crying and crying and rubbing snot all over her face and then she was sneezing like crazy! I decided to put her in the bathtub and hope the warm water would calm her down. It worked . . . for about 3 minutes, then the crying and the rubbing started again. I wrapped her up in a towel and kept her hands away from her face. I put on her favorite movie (baby einstein) and just held her until she would calm down. She was about asleep when I noticed little red bumps on her face. Then it hit me . . . Peanuts! I was sure it was an allergic reaction to the peanut butter cup flavor frozen yogurt I gave her. I unwrapped her and saw the hives spread all over her body. I got her dressed and we all rushed to Good Night Pediatrics and had the doctor tell me what to do. Luckily, nothing worse happened than the hives. Poor girl, her face was so swollen. You could even see the little bumps on her ears. The doctor prescribed a steroid medication for three days and dosage amount of benedryl and sent us on our way. After the first dose of benedryl she was already looking so much better.

Today she's doing fine. She still seems a little swollen and itchy, but I'm so glad it's not as bad as some people get it. I would hate to have to carry an epinephrin pen everywhere I go. Doctors don't do scratch tests until the child is 4 years old, but the doctor last night told me, this is most likely something she will not grow out of so getting her tested at 4 would be a good idea and to just stay away from peanuts altogether.

Now . . . how far do you think I should take this? Should I throw out the peanut butter, read labels on all of my food to make sure it wasn't made or manufactured with or near peanut oil etc, etc, etc? Or should I just be careful what I give her and let everyone else eat what they want? Anyone else have nut allergy horror stories?