Poor J and Links

My poor little J is suffering from an allergic reaction to something. Or she’s suffering from something. I don’t know what it is, but the poor child is a mess. She is red and bumpy and splotchy all over her entire body. She looks almost normal if she’s all drugged up on Benadryl, except that, of course, that she’s passed out on the bed when she’s all drugged up on Benadryl. And then she gets about half an hour of waking up and seeming sort of perky before she descends into itchy redness and we have to give her more medicine.  We went to the doctor, who was playing zydeco music and handing out beads for Fat Tuesday. Knowing that J has sensitive skin, the doctor was alarmed-yet-baffled, and said that it looked like J had walked through vaporized poison ivy while naked. But since none of us could recall anyone burning weeds in the neighborhood and we couldn’t come up with any other new clothes/drug/food exposures, she did a throat culture (in case it was an unbelievably severe strep-related rash) and then sent me to a lab to get poor J’s blood drawn.

I got in the car to drive straight to the lab with my miserable, itchy girl who was still sobbing quietly over the throat swab, and I figured, it doesn’t help to tell her what’s next. So we continued until I pass edour normal turn, and she asked, “Where are we going now?” I explained that we were headed to the lab, and then I asked her something completely off topic to try to throw her off. A minute or two later, she asked me to tell her more about the lab, and I managed to offer substantive information while avoiding the whole drawing-J’s-blood issue. She interrupted, “But Mommy, once we get there, what are we going to do?” And I said, “Oh, sweetie, one second, please let me focus; I know it’s up on the left somewhere.” So it was not until we’ve actually parked that I broke it to her that we were there to get her blood drawn.

More sorrow, bravery, tears, fear, pain. She made it through, and we were sent away with a butterfly sticker and a certificate. We decided that we both deserved  lunch at the Chinese buffet and M, who’d been having a grand old time playing at a friend’s house, got to come along, too.

Anyway, please send your healthy karma/prayers/non-itchy skin energy J’s way.

Here’s some other stuff I thought you might want to know about:

• The folks at the TU Your Day blog share a coupon for kids to eat free at Chili’s on Tuesday and Wednesday.
• They also shared that the Albany Institute is offering reduced rate admission–$2.21 per person–on Wednesday. The toys exhibit is still there, but not for long, so go.
• Reel Girl’s 5-your-old daughter was inspired by a picture book to learn to read a bike.
• If you love A Wrinkle in Time like I do, you might enjoy reading a whole bunch of blog posts about it.