cindy's world

Yesterday when we got home after work, I saw that Allie had two little scratches on her cheek. Jayne said that she’d accidentally scratched Allie while she was taking off Allie’s hat, and talked about how heart-breaking it was that Allie had just stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief, then her eyes started welling up with tears. This morning, Jayne brought her teenage daughter Alyssa along to spend part of the morning with Allie (she ADORES Allie and Allie actually would prefer her to Jayne, which would hurt Jayne’s feelings, haha), and told Alyssa the story about the scratch on Allie’s cheek. I didn’t think Allie was paying attention, but she started making a motion against her cheek as if she were scratching it with her nail, then pouted, whimpered, pointed to her cheek and said, “Boo-boo.” This little girl is going to learn to rat people out with her reenactments. And she doesn’t forget things, either. Months ago, she got a scrape on her knee, which is how she started saying the word “boo-boo.” She’d point out her boo-boo, usually when her knees are exposed such as when her diaper’s being changed, and ask that the person she shows it to kiss it all better for her.

Speaking of kissing non-existent boo-boos… I’ve been trying to get Allie to take single bites from larger chunks of food instead of stuffing the entire item into her mouth as she likes to do. Last weekend, I handed her a baby carrot (steamed soft) and stopped her from stuffing it, telling her “One bite, one bite” and holding her hand as she brings the food to her mouth. After a few times of interfering, she got it and would take a bite and a second consecutive bite immediately after. Oh, well, at least the item was being broken up before it ends up in her mouth. She was so eagerly eating her carrots this way that she ended up biting her finger, hard. She cried from the pain, and I kissed her finger for her. And then for dessert, she did it again with the strawberry spears she was eating. I felt bad that I made her hold food and bite down on it and because of that she ended up biting herself twice, but it was also funny. Nevertheless, I kissed her finger for her again. After that, Allie would fake biting her finger (of both hands), then whimper while offering me that finger to kiss. Sometimes the finger doesn’t even touch her teeth. She practically points to the inside of her open mouth and then would pull the finger out with her bottom lip flipped out in a pouty smile, and whimper as she aims the “injured” finger at me to kiss, and then do the same for the finger of the other hand, and then back and forth. I wonder if playing along gives the message that I can be fooled. Oh, well…it’s cute.

When we got home after work yesterday, Jayne told us that Allie tried to vault out of her crib after her nap. :/ Allie customarily gets 15 minutes post-nap to hang out in her crib and do her own thing, “own thing” meaning, primarily, to poop. She’d stay contentedly in there much longer, but we don’t want her to sit in her own poop longer than that. In was in these 15 minutes that Jayne looked over at the babycam monitor and saw that Allie’s upper body was on the wide front rail of the crib with one leg already over. She needed only to lean a little more and she’d be on the floor. Jayne freaked out and sprinted for Allie’s room, screaming “ALLIE!” on the way to stop Allie. She said when she burst in there, Allie was so startled and felt so reprimanded that she (Allie) was heaving and sobbing. Jayne said it took awhile for her own heart rate to go back to normal. Now that’s a caring nanny. 🙂

Jayne thought Allie may have gotten an extra height boost from stepping on the crib bumpers that line the perimeter of Allie’s crib. I’ve seen Allie step on them before but didn’t think it’d occurred to her to use it as a step-stool. I was hoping this was an isolated incident so that we could leave the bumpers on a bit longer, since Allie sometimes wedges her head in the soft corner and/or hangs a foot out between the crib slats in her sleep.

But she’d already used the front part of the crib rail like a ballerina leg-stretching bar recently (which she did while I was in there so I just pushed her foot off), and the entire evening with us, she was behaving like a little monkey, climbing onto the La-Z-Boy, climbing onto the back rest of the La-Z-Boy to look out the window behind it, climbing in and out of her tub. When Mr. W said we need to take the bumpers off, I didn’t protest. Luckily, Allie nursed herself to sleep last night and stayed asleep (for the 4th night in a row) when transferred to her crib, so she didn’t notice that the bumpers were gone. Her crib looks so roomy and bare to me now.

If Allie is still able to get herself over the rail, we’re going to have to change the rail to make her bed a toddler bed, with lower front rails and an opening about halfway in, so that she doesn’t hurt herself dropping from the top of the crib rail to the floor when she’s in there alone. I have no clue how to get her to stay in bed during her long latency periods if she has direct access out, so I’m hoping this stage stays away a little (a lot) longer. She can and does open her bedroom door unassisted, but that’s less of an issue to me than her pulling out all her dresser drawers and hurting herself while we sleep.

Last night, just in case, I pulled the little plastic footstool away from the side of her crib and more toward the center of the room. Just in cause she’s still able to vault over the crib rails and fall on the stool. She did fine on Night 1 of the debumperized bed, staying asleep until Mr. W woke her up to get ready this morning, so she probably never noticed the bumpers were gone. Hopefully the nap goes well today.

Just this past weekend, Mr. W was saying that Allie’s “behind” in her developmental abilities because she doesn’t know her colors, yet. He blames that on the fact that we see her approximately half an hour in the mornings before work, and an hour and a half in the evenings after work. “See, we need to retire so we can spend more time with her and teach her things,” he declared in his never-ending string of arguments for getting me to quit my job.
He brought this up to Allie’s nanny Jayne on Monday, and Jayne said, “She’s gotta know her colors — we go over them all the time. She’s just not saying them.”
And then Tuesday morning, as Allie and I cuddled up in the La-Z-Boy recliner in her room about to nurse, I pointed at the colorful elephants on her fleece pajamas and said, “Elephants!” She looked down at her pajamas. I pointed at the elephants floating on the mobile in her room and said again, “Elephants!”
Allie pointed at a pink elephant on the leg of her PJs. “Mmm?” she asked me.
“Pink elephant,” I said. She pointed at another elephant on her knee. “Green elephant,” I said.
Then she pointed at a blue elephant on her thigh. “Boo?”
“That’s right, that’s blue!” I said, wondering if it were a coincidence.
She pointed at other elephants on her PJs, asking with her inquisitive “Mmm?” and I in turn named each of their colors. Then she returned to the blue elephant, pointed, and said, “Boo?” It’s not a coincidence! Encouraged by my enthusiasm, she then placed a tiny fingertip on the blue elephant’s eye. “Eye?” I was very happy yesterday morning.

This evening, when we returned home after work, Jayne excitedly told us that Allie had pointed to a pair of socks Jayne had been holding in her hand and said, “Yellow.” I’ve never heard her say “yellow” so I don’t know how she pronounces it. Jayne said she’d looked down at the socks and only then realized she was holding yellow socks, so it was completely unprompted.

In your face, dada!

Speaking of face, Allie in the past couple of weeks has enjoyed pointing out facial features to us. “Eye?” she’d say, poking herself in the eye. Then she’d point to my eye.
“Mama’s eye,” I’d tell her.
“Mama?” she’d confirm, poking me in the eye. And then she’d move on. “No?” she’d say, pointing at her nose. Then she’d point to my nose. Then she’d stick her finger in her mouth and say, “Teeth!” “Ear” comes out more like “Eee.” Eyebrow to her is just “bwow.” Then she’d jab at her neck and say, “Nock nock nock!” After that she’ll jab my neck and say the same thing. She also goes through this with her stuffed animals. She points out her bear’s eyes, nose, ears.

Just a couple of days ago, I finally realized that the “mock nee” she says while in her room, as she’d said for almost a couple of months now, refers to her singing dancing sock monkey that was a gift from Auntie Maggie, sitting on her dresser. She says it like it’s two different words, but always says it together, so I don’t know why I didn’t think to put “mock nee” together for “monkey” before now. We also realized last week that the “me me” she’s been saying for weeks didn’t mean herself; she means Minnie Mouse. Maybe she’s been saying her colors all along and we just didn’t understand her. Maybe she’s been saying tons of other words that we still haven’t understood, yet. Maybe she’s been reciting Hamlet‘s “To be or not to be” soliloquy for weeks when we thought she was just humming and babbling to herself.

Okay, that’s a little unrealistic. More likely, she says “blue” and “yellow” because she’s aspiring to be a Bruin, like her mama.

What color’s the egg, Allie?

Here are some Easter photos and videos, a week late. =P

Mr. W and I went grocery shopping on Saturday, the day before Easter, and he talked about wanting to buy pre-boiled, pre-dyed eggs. There’s no such thing, I’d said. Half the fun/point of Easter egg hunts is egg creation, isn’t it? At least, that’s what my inexperienced little Asian perspective of a mostly-Western tradition tells me. I’d always wanted to dye/make Easter eggs as a kid, and since we’re Chinese in a (mostly) culturally Chinese immigrant household growing up, I couldn’t explain to my parents why I’d want to make a mess like that with perfectly good food. When I moved out after graduating college, I saw a P.A.A.S. egg-dying kit at the grocery store and bought it, wanting to add the missing piece back into my childhood, but never got around to even opening the package. I may have read the instructions in the back and decided it was too much trouble for just myself. Mr. W said that now that we have a baby, we need to give her these quintessential childhood experiences so I would have to get my virgin feet wet in egg dye. I sort of rolled my eyes about the hassle (since she’s still too young to really appreciate or participate in egg dying), but a small part of me was interested, too. Well, guess what we saw in the grocery store.

Gosh darn it, but he was right. We get to be lazy parents for another year. We tell ourselves NEXT year, we’ll really do it “right” because she would be old enough to enjoy and “help.”
Allie’s paternal grandparents had come to visit a couple of weekends ago and brought her her first Easter basket (I didn’t know about Easter baskets full of goodies being a “thing” until, like, last year, either. Apparently these Western kids get goodies, gifts and junk food in as many occasions as excited parents can muster up, often well into the kids’ adulthood. I wasn’t spoiled like that. I’m a little envious.). In it were a pair of small bouncy chick and bouncy bunny wind-up toys, hairbands/bows for her head, and this gorgeous little Easter dress that we put her in. Her nanny left a surprise Easter basket for her, as well, full of sand toys and a book, and we used her nanny’s felt Easter bag for her egg hunt. Shoes and basket from her nanny, dress from her paternal grandparents, hat from me ($1 at Target), and here’s her ensemble:

While my parents, her gong-gong and po-po looked on, Allie went to the backyard where Mr. W had randomly placed the eggs on the lawn, and Allie had her first Easter egg hunt. (We knew we didn’t want to take her to a public one just yet; I’d heard too many stories about parents getting into fights with other parents over egg hunts that somehow became a aggressive contact sports with audience participation.)

Allie enjoyed herself so much, and kept saying “More? More?” that her dada simply took the eggs out of her basket and tossed them back on the lawn in places where she had her back turned. It was, like, perpetual eggstravaganza.

My dad, her gong-gong, was super-impressed at how she knew to pick up the eggs and place them in her basket. “How she know to do that?” I said that based on this 20-second video my mom shot, it was because they were all shouting directions at her.

After the egg hunt, dada cracked open an egg and fed it to Allie as a snack.

Allie: “Wait a minute…so you’re telling me that I have to eat ALL that stuff I picked up off the ground?”
BTW, yes, the swing outside has become her outdoor high chair. Works super-well. Then we had a quickie parents-and-Allie portrait…

…and then we all went to dinner at Claim Jumper. Stepkidlet came along. She’s really good at self-portraits, even group ones.

Did I tell you guys Allie’s a mommy’s girl right now? Here’s 30 seconds of proof. She hugs me, pats my back, but when Mr. W asks for a kiss, she shakes her head. My mom then asked for a hug and Allie knew that she couldn’t reach my mom from across the table, so she pretended to reach up and hug my mom (hugging the air in front of her) as a joke. And then when invited to kiss me, she hugged me again.


The stepkidlet, who filmed the above video, laughed and joked about how Allie didn’t want to hug Mr. W, but then we passed Allie over to the other side of the booth, the stepkidlet asked for a hug, and got the same head-shake. “HA, not so funny anyMORE when it happens to YOU, is it?!” Mr. W gloated. Stepkidlet good-naturedly found that really funny, as well. In case you’re viewing this off an Apple device and can’t view videos, here’s a still of a hug. 🙂

Awww. 😀 Good note to end the post on. heh heh.

One of the most fun times I’d had in recent memory happened this past Monday. It was a court holiday (thank you, Cesar Chavez), so Mr. W thought he’d take advantage by taking the day off and addressing some car issues he’s had. Nothing big, turned out he had a nail in a tire which the dealership charged $33 to patch (ouch). He could’ve gotten it done for free at America’s Tire, where I go, but he already had his car there for an oil change so he just paid the extra. That’s not the fun part, in case you’re wondering what the heck is wrong with me.

When Mr. W got the call that his car was ready for pick-up, we put Allie in my car’s carseat (forward-facing for the first time, but we had to because we had to move to the next carseat size up and it didn’t fit properly backward facing. Allie is past the legal height and weight requirements for mandatory backward-facing, altho the recommendation is back-facing until age 2. She’s still backward-facing in Mr. W’s car, which we use to transport her 99.9% of the time), I drove, Mr. W climbed in the front passenger seat. I popped in a Pussycat Dolls CD, and I could see in the rear-view mirror and when I’d glance over my shoulder for a lane change that Allie was bopping along to the music, but whenever I or Mr. W would turn and look at her, she’d stop and just solemnly look back at us, first at one, blink, then eyeballs roll to the other parent, blink, eyeballs roll back to the first parent. Mr. W commented she looked like she was watching a very serious ping pong ball match.

Soon we dropped Mr. W off, and it was just Allie and me in my car driving home. The music came back again, and THIS time, she wiggle-wiggled to the music, bobbed her head, threw her hands in the air to the beat, smiled and laughed. I car-danced with her to PCD’s “Wait a Minute” and we both laughed and watched each other (me being careful to only turn around during red lights, of course). I guess she was just self-conscious when dada was in the car with her. She has been Team Mommy for awhile now. It made for a great drive home.

It’s amusing to see the kind of stuff a toddler can reach just because she’s taller than she should be — or at least, taller than the average girl her age (by a lot!). There’s no hiding things above Allie on the counter or the desk or the couch or the shelves, because she can see the item from a few feet away, so she just walks up to the surface and waves her hand around on top and she can reach pretty much anything. I’m glad I didn’t waste time babyproofing the lower parts of the house. If anything, she misses lower items (wires and electricity sockets) because they’re below her line of vision. This extra height also means she completely skipped the ways babies normally learn to descend stairways. My godbrother used to turn and get on his stomach, then slide down the carpeted stairs on his tummy feet-first. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. When he got older, he would booty-scoot by sitting on the top step with his feet on the step below, then carefully bringing his butt down to the step his feet are on, lowering his feet to the next step, getting to the edge of that step and sitting, then going down another step. MY kid is tall enough that she can take each step one foot at a time, so she goes up the stairs holding on to the vertical bars of the railing, putting one foot on each step, and she goes down the same way. I’d prefer her to take a step down with one foot then let the second foot join that first foot on the same step before she moves on to the next one, but she doesn’t always do that. And her legs are strong enough to support her body weight and bring herself up/down to the next step single-leggedly. Scary. When she was younger, we would let her crawl up the stairs while we stood close behind her in case of a backwards tumble, and we simply wouldn’t let her go down the stairs on her own. Now that she’s coordinated enough to go down, she totally skipped the baby methods. She actually has visible calf muscle definition. I may have wished a little too hard for her to grow up when she was an infant.

Here are two favorite videos, sent by my mom, to illustrate some of the stuff I was talking about in my last post.

This is Allie doing the slide on her own.

Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Photo Printing
And this is Allie in her first co-ed soccer game with some kids from my parents’ neighborhood. (She’s the youngest one by FAR; the next one up is 3 years old.)

Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Photo Printing
I found the last one HILARIOUS cuz Allie’s just following the kids running around, and at one point she gets distracted and wanders off the “field.” One of the older kids tries to get her back on track and points out the ball to her, but she doesn’t see it and goes the wrong way. And then she puts out her hands in a shrug and says, “Ball?” Like, Where’s the ball? And then she decides it’s more fun to march to the beat of her own drum anyway.

Baby-boo is 16 months old today!

We celebrated by doing one of Allie’s favorite things: taking a bike ride to the beach.

Allie loves this baby seat, the Ibert. Mr. W did a lot of research and this came highly recommended. Not bad at about $80, easy to install and to remove if Allie isn’t going to be riding with him. Her legs don’t get in the way kicking. She feels nice and secure with the snap-down bar and the straps. She loves that thing so much that the other day, when it was time to get her out of the bike, she protested, and pulled the bar back down and snapped it closed herself, holding it down with her hands so Mr. W couldn’t lift her out. He thought that was hilarious. This also gives her more visibility than pulling her in the bike trailer, and allows more interaction between the rider and the baby. The trailer is good for less ideal weather, longer rides, or multiple/bigger kids. The extra interaction is how Mr. W discovered that Allie hums when riding, and occasionally says, “Wheeee.” She also points out stuff to him as they go.

Allie vocabulary seems to have blossomed this month. She uses words we didn’t even know she knew. Walking through the garage, she pointed at our bikes mounted on the wall and said, “Bike?” We thought Jayne pointed out our bikes to her when they would leave for their stroller walks to the park by exiting the garage, but Jayne said she never did. “We see other kids ride bikes, though, and I’d tell her to look at the kids on their bikes.” Sure enough, Allie points and says “bike” whenever she sees anyone ride by on a bicycle. Earlier in the week, she pointed up and said, “Moon.” There was indeed the moon hanging in the sky. We theorize that she got that from our readings of “Goodnight, Moon,” because each time she points out the moon, it would be followed by a wave and a “bye-bye.” Riding on the bike, each time we pass a playground, she’d point and say, “Pock!” (park) and whimper in protest when we wouldn’t stop. We took her to my parents’ house this morning and she got to play most of the morning at the playground across the street from their house. When we left, she said waved at the direction of the park and said, “Bye-bye pock.” Today, she called her snack smoothie a “smeemee” and pointed whenever she was ready for more. She also says more, although it comes out more like “mo.” She attempts to emulate words more, saying “beet” when I fed her beets. She got a playful glint in her eye earlier when she emptied all the blocks out of the wooden box they come in and said, “Hat,” then turned the box upside down and put it on her head. Also today, she pointed up at the wallpaper trim of Pooh and friends in her room and said, “Pooh.” Even when she’s not talking, we’ve all been surprised recently by how much she apparently understands. “Hold on to the swing,” “throw the ball,” “put that rock over there,” “put this shirt in the hamper,” “blow a kiss,” “where’s mama’s eyebrow?”, “pick up that hat and bring it to me,” “blow this dandelion fluff.” She did it all.

In the car this morning coming home, after playing at the park, I noted the glazed look on her face and said to Mr. W, “She’s pooped.” Allie snapped out of her reverie, looked at me with a surprised expression, moved her seat belt buckle aside, pointed at her butt/diaper, and said, “Poo?” I laughed.

She takes her single nap at noonish, and we can’t figure out why she’ll sleep over 2 hours with us and about 90 minutes with Jayne. I’m thinking Jayne talks on the phone when Allie’s napping and Allie can hear it. Allie still nurses twice a day, about 10 minutes in the morning after she wakes up and 20 minutes before she goes to bed.

She’s still a mama’s girl. We took her for a quick visit to Dwaine’s before getting to my parents’ house, and as she’d only been there once, she was very shy and clung to me. We did manage to get a picture, though.

If she’s scared or hurt, dada isn’t enough, she verbally would request me. Most of the time, if she’s with Mr. W so I could get something done, I can’t walk by her without her dropping whatever she’s doing and whining until I pick her up or she gets to follow me around. I consider this only fair given that for the first almost-year of her life, she was totally daddy’s girl. As long as she’s got better things to do, however, she’ll let others watch her without me. At the playground by my parents’ house today, I wasn’t there half the time, and she had a blast playing with some other kids who were there, chasing around a ball, being pushed by grandma and grandpa on the swing, and she realized she could climb up a toddler section on her own, walk across the short platform, and sit at the edge of a small slide, push off, scoot herself off the slide the rest of the way, and get down all on her own. She’s on her way to independence.

Jayne reports that Allie is usually the best-behaved girl at the park; she’d run up to strange kids and play with them, help them put sand in their buckets, touch them and hug them. The problem are the mean kids who would push her away and the other day, Jayne let Allie crawl into a playground tunnel after a little boy, but got up to check on them, and saw the little boy in the tunnel trying to step on Allie’s fingers. Mr. W is a little concerned that because Allie doesn’t interact much with other little kids (like siblings), she doesn’t learn to be wary of kids so she’ll get abused when she eventually goes into daycare or preschool. I won’t worry about that, yet. For now, I’ll just enjoy the fact that my baby is friendly and loving and loves to help and share. She’s big enough to stand her ground if she needs to, and besides, both Dwaine and Andrae had offered to give her karate lessons when she’s older. 🙂

My parents-in-law told hubby a couple of weeks ago, “Your daughter’s making us feel guilty for not visiting, so we’re driving down to see you guys.” We had both thought they were saying the stepkidlet may have said something to them, but turns out, they meant Allie. I’ve gotten in the habit of posting an Allie pic and having “Allie” wish people happy birthday/anniversary/whatever-the-occasion on the social networking site, and both my father-in-law and mother-in-laws’ bdays were recent. As an example, this is what “Allie” posted for her grandpa on his birthday:

“Why were you hiding behind me on my birthday, grandpa? Does that mean I should go hide behind you today? Happy birthday!”

So, last Friday, they drove all the way down from Vegas just to hang out with us for 2 days before driving back Sunday morning. Saturday morning, we took Allie for her first boat ride on our Lake. It was a chilly foggy morning, but Allie still had fun exploring the party boat.
With grandma and mama.

Mr. W was excited to see these paddleboarders do their early morning yoga on the water.

Allie even got to be captain of the boat for awhile.

Allie points out ducks to grandpa.

As they got ready to leave Sunday morning, they found the time to give their youngest grandchild a little ride on her trike.

Allie: “Hey mama, did you get lots of good photos to guilt grandma and grandpa with for the next year?”
Me: “Shhh, we’re calling these photos ‘memories.’ ”
Allie: “Blackmail material, memories, potato, potahto. You and I know what’s really up.”

It was a fun visit. Grandpa kept remarking throughout the weekend, watching Allie good-naturedly go through her routines, feed herself and cleanly eat all her food and snacks, hang out with us at restaurants, take her naps and go to bed on time without fussing, “I never thought I’d believe in giving a baby set routines, but now I’m a believer. She’s something else! What you’re doing is really working. I’ve never seen a baby behave like this.” Score. Let’s hope we can keep the charade up until and through her “Terrible Twos.” Heh heh.

After Allie woke up from her long nap on Sunday, I thought I’d introduce peanut butter to her, as she’d been eating so well and is now well past the recommended age of 12 months for trying peanuts, a high-allergen food. So for her afternoon snack, I spread some all-natural, no-sugar-added organic peanut butter on a slice of sprouted whole grain bread, and started giving her pieces. She seemed to enjoy it, although she did need to chug a bit of milk during the snack. I didn’t give her the whole slice, and she had the equivalent of maybe a teaspoon of peanut butter, when I decided that was enough fat and carbs for now and switched her to some cut melon. Mr. W winked at Allie, and she in turn clenched both eyes, then put her index finger into her left eye, which Mr. W laughed at, thinking she was trying to wink one eye but unable to do so without some help from her finger. Allie was a few pieces into the melon when she started pulling the melon out of her mouth, refusing to eat any more. She kept digging her fingers and fists into her left eye, which had gotten red, and my attempts to get her to stop just make her fussy. I was observing her closely for peanut allergies, and noted two or three small red bumps appear on her chin. I fed her water, concluded snacktime and asked Mr. W to help clean up her hands and face while I cleared the table and washed her dishes. I noticed her left eye was now swollen, watery and red, but it may have been Allie digging her fingers in there that caused it.

Soon my parents came over for their weekend visit, and Allie’s mood was good as she ran around playing with them. I saw a tiny white bump on her temple, like a bug bite. Soon I noticed another on her cheek, then on her neck. In another half hour, the raised bumps were everywhere I could see skin, surrounded by redness, and Allie was absently scratching her ribs. Mr. W stripped her to check her body, and with horror we saw that the bumps and the red rash were on her neck, torso, back. Her ears were also growing red, as with her cheeks where more bumps had appeared.

I got Allie’s medical card and dialed the number for the advice nurse. While I was lost in the maze of push-button options, my mom noted that Allie’s hands were growing pink and swollen. The rash grew and spread, the pink parts getting pinker. Mr. W bolted out the door to the store for Children’s Benadryl. I had finally gotten through the phone options to be put on hold for a live person, so I put the phone on speaker and set it on the desk, then went to my daughter who was now crying for mama. As soon as I was with her, she was fine, and I made sure she wasn’t having respiratory issues or other signs of discomfort. So far the only symptoms were the bumps, redness, and swelling of hands, feet and ears.

Mr. W soon returned with the Benadryl and I was finally on the line with a live advice nurse after 15 minutes of being on hold. She had me check for signs of fever, lethargy, disorientation, breathing difficulty, oral swelling, behavioral change. They were all negative. She told me I could go ahead and administer 3/4 teaspoons of the Children’s Benadryl to help alleviate the rash but that it could take up to an hour to take effect and it could also make Allie drowsy. Since the bumps had already flattened and all that remained was the pinkness around where the bumps used to be, I decided to let nature run its course instead of drugging Allie unnecessarily. She definitely didn’t seem uncomfortable. When the nurse ended the call, she told me to call back or bring Allie to a doctor if the rash deepens to red or purple with pinhead-sized red dots, and to not feed Allie peanut butter anymore. Of course, not. Never, ever, ever, I vowed, only half-jokingly.

We carried on as normal and about 45 minutes later, I fed her dinner. For Allie’s dessert, I fed her the pieces of the yellow-skinned, white-fleshed melon imported from Brazil that she didn’t finish while having her peanut butter and bread snack earlier. This time she ate it without protest, but a few pieces in, within a minute after she started the melon, her ears flamed red and swelled to the point where the outer ridge was barely discernable, her hands and feet swelled and got pink and hot wrist- and ankle-down, bumps appeared around her neckline with a vengeance, her cheeks flushed. She started digging her fists into her eyes again, rubbing violently. Both eyelids swelled. I immediately pulled her out of the high chair and said to Mr. W, “It’s the melon! It’s the melon!” We fed her water, and Mr. W immediately administered the Benadryl. She sucked on the oral syringe playfully, but as soon as she tasted it she gagged. Some of it dripped out onto her shirt as she whimpered, but the swallowed most of it. We checked her body again, and saw that her entire torso was flushed hot pink down into her diaper area, which we also examined and saw that it looked like she had a diaper rash (altho her skin wasn’t sensitive the way it is when she gets a diaper rash), one that went all the way down to her lower inner thighs nearly to her knees. She was also red behind the knees, inside her elbows, under her arms. Behavior-wise, she again acted indifferent to the changes.

45 minutes to an hour later, Allie was much better and there was only mild pinkness around her cheeks and the areas that sustained the most severe rashes, and her bumps were gone. Allie nursed at bedtime and fell asleep, and slept through the night as usual. Mr. W recalled that the bumps I’d initially noticed on her chin during snacktime had appeared when she took her first bite of the melon and the juice dribbled down her chin, so he also thinks it’s the melon.

“What kind of melon IS that?” people wanted to know when I relayed the story. I don’t know; it was something we bought in an international grocery market Friday evening and all the sticker label said was “melon” and that it was imported from Brazil, and that it was ready to eat and delicious. The flesh inside was similar to that of honeydew, but whiter and less sweet. The yellow-skinned melon she had twice on Saturday without issue, but the third time on Sunday she reacted within half an hour, and the 4th (and last) time, within a minute. Crazy! I should’ve followed the 3-day rule when I introduced this melon, but because she’s never had a food allergy problem before, and also because has eaten similar melons (honeydew and cantaloupe even the day before) without issue, I really thought it’d be fine. So now even though we suspect the melon, I guess I don’t know that it wasn’t somehow peanut-related as well or in addition.

I’ll try the skin-contact allergy test at some point, I suppose. I feel bad doing it so soon after her reaction, so maybe I’ll wait a few more days, then rub some melon on her skin and see if there’s an eruption. And maybe a month later, I’ll rub some peanut butter on her skin. We’re hoping it’s the melon and not peanut butter, because it’s certainly easier to avoid exotic melons than to avoid peanuts, peanut oil, peanut butter, etc. *sigh*