Blame the Olives?

Yesterday started out like any other day. Rachel and I woke up before everyone else and headed to the grocery store. Instead of Walmart, I opted for Marsh. While there, I remembered we were out of Olives. In the olive isle I saw there was a name brand and an off brand. As any usual bargain shopper would do, I opted for the generic brand and we went on our way. The olives come in to play later in the weekend.

We got back and played at the house for a while when I noticed it was bright, sunny and flat out gorgeous outside. Jason and I are still fighting off some sort of sinus/cold/yucky stuff so we didn't want to do too much. So I opted to get us out of the house and go to the park that's just by our house. Rachel LOVED the park, although everything there is still really big for her. Regardless, I got some fun snaps:

Check out her hair! As with any playground, this one was full of static, making her hair stand up straight on end.
Jason joined us later on:

Afterwards we went and saw our neighbor across the street and I noticed that Rachel's face was still puffy. I thought she was just puffy from the weather changing so dramatically. While we were at their home I felt her forehead and noticed it was kind of squishy, which was odd, but I decided not to make a fuss. But when we got home we saw that the top of her head was red. None of this was making sense and she wasn't running a fever. We gave her some tylenol and continued with our day.

That night as I was giving her a bath I noticed that it wasn't just the top of her head that was red. The skin on her back wasn't smooth. I looked closer and I realized she was covered in one massive hive. So we do what any semi-panicked parents do: We called my mom :o)

Mom said not to worry, it's a normal thing for toddlers. So I tried not to and we put her to bed.

Then this morning she was worse. I took this picture with my phone before I headed to the drug store:

It's not the most flattering picture, but you can see how swollen her forehead and eyes are. So we got her some benadryl and have been trying to keep an eye on her.

So this morning as I was on my way to the drug store the whole weekend started coming back to me and the clues that something was wrong started to come together. And I remembered that she had thrown up twice, but the circumstanced surrounding it made me think she'd just choked, and everything had come up as a result. Then I remembered what she had choked on and thrown up: the olives. She hasn't had much of an appetite, but I remembered when I gave her some olives during lunch yesterday she started crying. I wasn't looking at her when she started crying, so I had assumed she had bitten her cheek or something.

Although my mom informed me this morning that apparently my brother and I had broken out in the same hives with the same symptoms when we were her age. So, at least now we know it's probably not the olives...but just to make myself feel better, I threw them out anyway! Next time I'll opt for the name brand ones.