I Don't Beat My Children

I swear I don't.

However, this is Little Miss today. I've faced the question constantly over the past four days, "What happened? Did you punch her or something?"



*sigh*

No, I didn't touch her. I would never touch either of the wee ones. Little Miss happens to be allergic to mosquitoes. If you look carefully, you can see the bite -- now that the swelling and bruising has gone down slightly four days later.



You'd think that I would keep her at home when she looks like this - and worse in previous days. You'd think that I'd have the sense to avoid the questions and the suspicious looks.

Nope. Not so much. Little Miss has been to the nursery at church, in church, to the childcare area at our club, to the pool, to Spanish classes, to gymnastics, out to dinner, and to the grocery store.

And everywhere I go, I now preface it with, "Little Miss is allergic to mosquitoes. Her eye is pretty well swollen, but it isn't an eye infection and nothing is contagious."

We stay inside whenever we expect mosquitoes, and we use the new clip-on bug keep away things. They work, for the most part. But wow, were those mosquitoes vicious on the Fourth. She got bit twice on her arm and one additional bit on her jaw line. Poor kid.

But next time she gets bit near her eye and it looks like she's got a shiner versus the usual swelling and bruising on her arm or leg, I'm putting her into hiding until it goes away!

Fingers crossed that she outgrows this allergy someday! Soon.

Freaky Child!

I got that call from daycare today. You know the one. We all dread it. “Hello, Mrs. X, you need to come pick up your daughter.”

Of course, the call came about about 9:45 in the morning. She had been dropped off at 9am. Of course, I was in the office and in meetings until about 11:30. I was a bit panicked when I got the voicemail since it had been left so much earlier in the day. I hadn’t seen Little Miss that morning.

On the days I go into the office, my mom very kindly comes over at the ungodly hour of 6:15 – that means I’m up at 5:45, people! – to get the wee ones up and dressed and breakfasted and off on the bus and to daycare before she starts her day. (Thank you, Mom! You know you’re appreciated!)

Thus, I hadn’t seen Little Miss since I’d left to go practice softball the night before. When I left, she was fine. My husband didn’t say anything was wrong with her when I got home the night before. And my mom had sent her to daycare that morning. What could be wrong?

I called the daycare back immediately and asked to speak to Little Miss’s teacher. She wasn’t available but the director told me that her grandma had picked her up already and was taking her to the doctor because she had a really bad eye infection, and they were worried that it was contagious. Umm, thanks for calling me back to let me know that my mom had picked up Little Miss!

I then called my mom who said that her eye was hugely swollen and red and puffy but that she didn’t want to not send Little Miss to daycare that day for fear that my husband and I would be mad at her for keeping her home. Wait, what?

Needless to say, I was a bit worried about her, but the doctor’s appointment was at 11:45, so there was no way I could make it there in time. I decided that if it was really that bad and she had to go to the hospital for surgery (thanks for planting that thought in my head, Mom) I’d leave immediately and made my parents promise to call as soon as they heard from the doctor.

At 12:30, I called them again. They were just with the doctor then and would call me back. I waited, staring and staring at the clock. With each minute that passed, I was more convinced that there was something seriously wrong with her.

Finally, my parents called. It was just a bug bite. A simple little bug bite. So why was everyone freaking out so much?

Apparently, Little Miss is allergic to mosquitoes. She had a bite just to the side of her eye and it had swollen and so forth with the allergic reaction. Oh. Well, now that I think about it, the couple bites she got last year did swell up and have big red patches, but nothing like this!

New medical knowledge for me: the face has lots and lots of blood vessels so any allergic reaction will have much more swelling as there are that many more vessels to let the blood loose, etc. Oh, and because there is so much more blood, it will take that much longer for the blood to be taken back up by the vessels, which means that she’ll have what looks like a shiner for a much longer time. Great.

It’s now a week later, and she still has a shiner below her eye (awww, isn’t it cute?). Don’t call DCFS on me. It’s actually worse right now, as she got bit on her arm at daycare this time, which also got red and black and blue and swollen. My guess as that the second bite got the first bite inflamed again.

The good news is that Little Miss has an incredibly high pain tolerance and isn’t bothered by the bites. But hoo boy, I can tell this is going to be a fun summer! My mom has already vowed to not let her outside again until winter. Riiiiiight.