Colors and Crumbs

Baby E seemed to be feeling just fine yesterday morning. Her newest tooth finally seems to have made the initial break through the skin, and that's always a relief. The allergic reaction or whatever it was from the day before seemed to be completely gone.

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The girls and I hurried to get ready for the day this morning because we wanted to run a couple of errands before lunch. At Wal-Mart, I asked the girls to pick out fabric for skirts. We wandered the aisles, pointing out which fabrics we liked best.

It was really fascinating watching the girls look at fabric. They've reached the age now where they look not just at what characters are on the fabric, but at color, tone and print to decide what they like. And they're each developing their own very distinct style.

In every aisle M&M picked out very bright jewel tones and high-saturation colors--hot pink, royal purple, bright lime green, sunshine yellow. Those are the colors I tend to like as well, so much of their wardrobe reflects those tones, along with the denim blue, black and white pieces I consider basic.

To my surprise, though, invariably AJ went for the last piece of fabric I would have considered when sewing children's clothing. She liked the muted, earth-tone colors. Burnt orange, steel blue, moss green, brown ochre, wheat--the kinds of colors DH and our friend Morning like to wear. There are very few clothes in those colors in her wardrobe.

I asked the girls to each pick out three coordinating fabrics for a tiered skirt. I liked a set of three coordinating florals in butter yellow with coral and blue flowers for Baby E. I thought the older girls might like that, too, and all three could have matching skirts. But no. M&M picked out two bright hot pinks and a bright purple, all with subtle geometric tone-on-tone patterns. AJ picked out three coordinating florals with sort of a golden-brown background, and lots of brown, yellow and rust tones, along with some dark moss green and touches of cobalt blue and India red.

We only ended up getting the yellow for the time being, because the pattern called for making the skirt out of just one type of fabric and I wasn't sure how much of each I would need. So I'll have to go back and get the other two once I get out the pattern and measure up how much of each fabric to buy. But it was really revealing and fun to go through the aisles with the girls and see what they picked out. It's so much fun to see their tastes developing and changing over time. AJ has gone from liking pink and purple a lot (but in lighter tones than M&M likes), to choosing lots of greens and yellows in all different tints, to now preferring earth tones. It will be interesting to see if the girls tastes remain similar to what they like now as they get older.

It was getting to be snack time, so I let the two older girls buy boxes of animal crackers and got freeze-dried apples for Baby E. The crackers did have soybean oil in them, so I warned the girls not to let E get any, and they were quite good about keeping them from her.

As we were looking for patterns, I realized that one of the girls had finished her crackers and left the empty box on the floor. I picked it up, being careful to keep it in my other hand away from Baby E's reach. But as I opened the pattern drawer and tried to juggle Baby E and the cracker box while finding and pulling out a pattern, Baby E saw the moment of opportunity. She grabbed and the box and held it up over her head, showering crumbs over herself.

I felt like bad mommy of the year, letting her get hold of something containing soy two days in a row. I should have been more careful, especially after yesterday.

It didn't look like she'd gotten any in her mouth, so with some trepidation I brushed her off and hoped she wouldn't have a reaction. We finished our shopping quickly because M&M needed to use the restroom, and went out to the van where we keep a portable potty with disposable liners.

While M&M used the potty, I changed Baby E's diaper and noticed that she had a rash. It was an unusual rash--tiny pintpoints of slightly raised red bumps, not too dark but noticeable, all over her diaper area. I had a disposable diaper on her for our outing, so I figured I must have left it on too long between changes. That tends to irritate her skin, though hadn't seen a rash that looked quite like this before.

I made sure to change her diaper every hour or so for the rest of the day, and the rash faded a bit. She seemed really fussy and irritable, though. She had an unusually short nap, from which she woke up screaming. Then she spent the afternoon crying whenever I put her down and fussing frequently. It wasn't extreme, though, and she was happy most of the time as long as I was holding her or keeping her interested in something.

It didn't seem like her typical soy reaction, so I wondered if maybe she was cranky because she had barely napped or because of teething, her ears or something. She does still have a runny nose and a bit of a cough, so she probably doesn't feel good anyway. I put ear drops in her ears just in case that was the problem.

I was undressing her to get her ready for bed when I pulled off her onesie to reveal tiny little spots all over her tummy and back, just like what was under her diaper. Then I really felt like the bad mommy of the year. I hadn't even thought to check to see if the rash was elsewhere.

I don't know if the rash was from eating a crumb or if there were some in her clothes against her skin, but it apparently showed up within minutes of the cracker incident and laster for many hours afterwards. It could have been the wheat or something else in the ingredients, too--we haven't introduced her to wheat yet, either.

A call to the doctor reassured me that just watching her was all that was needed. But you can be sure I'll be asking for a referral to an allergist as soon as possible. With the escalating severity of reactions to even the most minute amounts of food, I'm concerned we may need to carry an epi-pen to ward off a potentially life-threatening reaction.

She still doesn't seem to be feeling well today, though, so I am wondering if she does also have an ear infection or something else going on.