Anaphylaxis

I guess they give you an Epi-Pen 'cause they think you might need it.  Despite the ads, you really don't have to ask your doctor if Epi-pen is right for you.  If you have life-threatening allergic reactions, then someone is going to prescribe one for you.  They'll teach you how to use it.  Then you'll go home, put it in the diaper bag or purse and hope you never have to use it.

Nate's allergies are a problematic set from an anxiety standpoint because a lot of the stuff he is "allergic" to is really better defined as an intolerance.  If he gets milk or soy or peanuts he's not going to stop breathing.  He's just going to throw up, and probably not until hours later.  What we've seen from beans and peas has been only hives and a stomach ache.  Even the sesame, which is the worse we have seen to date, resulted in hives and vomiting that went away with benadryl.  OK, and yes, he did develop some stridor, but he never needed epinephrine and he got better before we went to the hospital.  And eggs?  Well, we avoid eggs.  We don't keep the crumbly liquid little devils in the house because we've never seen what happens and frankly don't want to.  His blood and skin testing for egg was so over the top impressive that we avoided it on principle for a while and when we finally got brave enough to let them into the house, Nate got a whole body skin rash after I put lotion on him after touching a hard boiled egg.  So, no, then.  No eggs 'round here.

It turns out, though, that danger can be lurking where you least expect it.
In a 1 1/2 pound Costco bag of pine nuts.
When Nate, cruising around the kitchen while we were getting ready for dinner, asked if he could try some, I said yes.  He's never had problems with nuts.  Eats almond butter, had cashews on the way to school in the morning that very morning, and loves macadamia nuts, but who doesn't really?

He loved the pine nuts, too.  He was smiling and scooping them into his mouth.  At some point he stopped and told me "some of those pine nuts taste kind of yucky" and requested some juice to get the taste out.  He spilled rather than drank his juice but left the kitchen to work on a puzzle in the living room.  It was dark in there, so I didn't notice the hives on his face until the sight of him scratching his tongue made me take a closer look.

With hives erupting on his face and the ongoing tongue scratching Dave and I rushed him upstairs for some benadryl.  Still, he quickly got worse with a cough, some gagging, and a speech impediment that sounded like he was trying to talk around a mouthful of marbles.

Here's what it's like to use the Epi-pen.  First of all, you'd better have a helpful adult ready to subdue the toddler.  Secondly, you are not going to remember how to use it and reading the directions when you are just a shade below panic is not easy.  The click of the needle release mechanism sounds like a gun went off and the baby screams "I don't like that pokey thing!" over and over in a voice made horrible by his too small throat and too large tongue and too copious saliva. You feel brilliant to have remembered to count to ten before pulling the needle out.  Then he cries and retches until the fire truck pulls up, sirens and lights on, and he is suddenly way more fascinated with the outside world than he is with his own misery.

A little unsolicited advice:  If an ambulance comes to your house, ride it to the hospital even if the driver doesn't think you need it.  Because no matter how good the Epi-pen has made the baby look, if you let the ambulance drive away empty, the epinephrine will start to wear off and you my find yourself in a a car with a screaming toddler who is breaking out in alarmingly red hives and scratching himself bloody while screaming that his tummy hurts and it hurts to breathe.

Later, when the emergency room physician tells you that you saved your child's life, you will feel a little light-headed.  You might even get teary.

You will be incredibly grateful when he is at home the next day, no worse for wear and managing to get on your nerves.

L'shana Tovah!  May 5772 be a year without anaphylaxis!

Up, up, and away

We went to the airshow this last weekend.
Nate has been an airplane ever since.
"You want to cover your ears" he will call from the next room, "There is a loud jet coming!"
"Zzzzzzzzzz" he soars into the room, arms outstretched, and opens his "nose cone" to take his medicine.

This morning he was a helicopter, twirling around the room with one arm over his head and desperately trying to keep his "tail propeller" going at the same time.

Whe he got to school on Monday morning he bounced into class and sat down for breakfast.  "Miss Sharon, we saw some airplanes. And two helicopters.  One was a "Korsky"!"
"A what?"
"A Sakorsky," I told her.
"A what?" she repeated.
"Don't worry," I said, "I hadn't heard of it either."

We also, due to the 9/11 memorial at Somerset, witnessed the landing of Air Force One.
"And we saw Marine One," Nate chimes in when we tell the story.

Oh, yeah, and he got to "fly" a jet too.

Garden Update

I promised some pictures of the watermelons.

From this . . . 

 To this . . . 

 Plus the now famous "secret watermelon" that was hidden in our neighbor's weeds.

Here is the recalcitrant tomato that has grown and grown but refused to turn red, finally showing an early blush.

And finally, a little harvest on its way to becoming our dinner.

I am basically in love with the garden.  Next year we might just till up the whole backyard.

Dinosaurs are big in the city of Pittsburgh.  Andrew Carnegie funded a huge excavation to bring a dinosaur skeleton here to his museum.  That skeleton is now replicated all over the world.  Consequently, when the city wants to say something cool, it usually says it with dinos.

The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts has a T-Rex out in front that the students outfit as appropriate for weather, current events, etc.  I've seen it in a Santa Hat, in gay pride gear, in Harry Potter glasses and a cape for the opening of the last movie.  It's cool to drive by and see what they've got going on.

*****

As you may or may not know, they have been shooting the latest Batman film in Pittsburgh.  They destroyed traffic with rolling street closures in downtown, made it snow in the middle of August, and even convinced thousands of Pittsburghers to show up to the Steelers' stadium in winter parkas to serve as extras for the shoot of a football game.  A lot of the filming has been within a few block radius of Dave's work, sometimes right outside his door, so he has kept us updated and inundated with pictures.  Nate has deduced, from dinnertime conversations, that "Daddy works with Batman."

We took a Ducky tour with Papa ken and Grandma Nancy that passed Batman filming and then Dave's building, and I think this really cemented the two ideas together.  Now every morning when Dave leaves for work, Nate announces that he is going to work with Batman.  

I am convinced he doesn't actually know who Batman is, couldn't pick him out of a lineup, wouldn't recognize him if he swung in on one of his cool toys and had his way with Catwoman right in front of us.

So this morning I asked. "Nate, do you know who Batman is?

Nate: "Uh huh.  Batman is a dinosaur."

Me: "A dinosaur?"

Nate: "Uh huh.  With a black hat."

Taken by Papa Ken on our Ducky Boat Ride (while we all pointed and chorused, "look at the Batman Dinosaur!").  

So nothing gets by our boy.

Duly noted.

Quote of the Week

Nate: "Don't squeeze me.  I'm not Play-Doh."

****

In the course of a 10 minute car drive, Dave taught Nate some meteorological facts.  Low pressure brings rain clouds and high pressure brings sun.
When Nate got home he proudly explained this to me - complete with squeaky voice and tiptoes for "high pressure" and assumed bass and squat for "low pressure."
Two days later he woke up in the midst of a truly impressive thunderstorm.  He looked around and said "We have thunder and lightning and rain.  We have low pressure."
If only the weathermen were so reliable.

Not exactly a car wash

Nate helped me unload the dishwasher before work this morning.  He very carefully took out the small plastic valves for his zippy cup and put them first into a later plastic container and then put the whole hint into a cabinet.
He got a special sticker for helping me out and he was VERY pleased with himself.
He then went on to entertain himself with his shoes and sunglasses while I loaded the dirty dishes and started the dishwasher.  It came to be time to leave and I could not find my car key.  It is a little brick of a key with a metal key that comes out like a switchblade and a couple buttons for remote entry.  I have had it for ten years and it has been dropped a lot.  It is held together by scotch tape.  At one point I asked the dealer for a new key.  "Sure," they said.  "for a mere $300."  I declined.
So, back to this morning and the missing key.
After hunting for a few minutes I said, "Hey, does anyone know where my car key is?"
"Oh!" exclaimed Nate, sprinting toward the kitchen.  He stopped next to the dishwasher.  "It's in there."
And it was, nestled into the silverware holder between two spoons.
Squeaky clean and thankfully still functional.

Branching Out

I was overjoyed when I discovered, through a chance encounter, that it would be possible to make my carnivorous vegan son a tasty chocolate cake.  He has eaten many of these depression-era chocolate cupcakes and had a dinosaur birthday cake made from the batter as well.  The frosting, made by necessity with Blue Bonnet light margarine was a little soft with an unfortunate tendency to separate, but all in all the cake was a success.
Given my recent discovery of vegan buttermilk, I felt ready to branch out and Grandma Nancy's birthday gave me the perfect occasion.
I was inspired by a friend from residency and her food/fashion/family blog but ultimately ended up settling on a slightly more time consuming but beautiful plan.
I used a vegan vanilla cupcake recipe I found on line (Note: do not consider the addition of the almond extract optional.  It was amazing.) and ended up using a triple recipe, but I made one batch at a time to keep it from going flat while waiting for the layers to be colored and baked.

 (I learned, actually, that our oven is not level, not that anything in our 70+ year old house is.  The resultant fat-on-one-side-skinny-on-another layers required some engineering skill to layer into a level cake.)
The finished product was supposed to be a rainbow but I got distracted in my ROYGBIV and it was just a colorful hodge-podge instead.

The addition of shortening to the buttercream improved the situation significantly though I lacked the diabetic determination necessary to put enough between the layers to really separate the colors.

A thin layer of chocolate on the outside because I firmly believe a birthday cake without chocolate is heresy, some rainbow candles, and voila, birthday magic.