No more PB&J

Last Friday I wanted to switch up Grant's usual lunch of cheese toast, veggies and fruit and thought a nice peanut butter and jelly sandwich sounded easy and somewhat healthy. Plus, he's now 12 months so that means he can try peanut butter, right? So I make him up a little sandwich and he eats it, not very excitedly, but he gets it down. In the back of my head I am thinking that I hope he isn't allergic to it, but he hasn't had trouble with any other food, so I tell myself he's fine. Right after I take him out of him chair I notice little red bumps forming under his chin. He won't hold still for me to take a good look at him so I bring him over to the TV and turn on Signing Time b/c I know he will be looking in one direction for awhile. In that time, the bumps had progressed to hives and started spreading all over his face. I'm getting quite concerned at this point, so I call the doctors office to see if I should bring him in or what I can do (yes, nursing knowledge pretty much goes out the window when your own child is the one who is sick). When I call the office all I get in their message machine saying we're closed for the next hour for lunch. Who takes an hour for lunch!!!! Fortunately, I had the UNC help line # from a previous late night call when Grant was 3 months old and had croup. At this point the hives are puffy all over his face and neck and he's rubbing at them, however, he seemed to be breathing normally. I finally get a hold of the nurse, who says just to give him some baby benadryl and watch him to make sure he doesn't have any breathing difficulties and call my doctor when they re-open. Of course I don't have any benadryl on hand but luckily my friend Lizzy who lives downstairs had some to share. The nurse said I needed to watch him for 2 hours because he could develop respiratory distress during that time in which cause he'd need to get to the ER immediately. So I'm pretty freaked by this whole experience but my blood pressure slowly begins to decrease back to normal once his hives start clearing out, about an hour after they started, thank goodness!! We went to the doctors yesterday for Grant to get some blood drawn which they will test to see how allergic he is. In the mean time, no more nuts in any form for Grant and we get to carry around an Epinephren pen wherever we go in case he has another encounter with peanuts that progresses to a worse reaction (which they say may be the case). I'm just glad that didn't happen the first time and it was just hives, that was scary enough for me!

Birthday Boy!

Grant's first birthday fell on mother's day, and I couldn't have asked for a better present! We actually celebrated his birthday on Saturday because my parents were able to come down for the day and hang out with us. I made Grant a homemade angel food cake with chocolate whipped cream and strawberries (okay, the strawberries weren't homemade) and we all had to wear party hats. My parents took us out to Red Robin for lunch and we sat right next to the big robin statue which was quite entertaining for Grant, that and my dad kept walking him around to play with the arcade games. My parents hadn't got him a present yet so we went to ghetto walmart and let Grant walk around and pick out what he wanted. I think this was his favorite part of his birthday. He's a good walker now and would roam the toy section touching all his favorite toys and trying them out. We got to experience ghetto walmart in it's full glory as we were leaving the store a couple of large thuggy guys were having a heated "conversation" with a lot of "your mama's" and were starting to fight. Grant not only got a few good toys on his birthday, but got to see his first street fight, don't you love walmart?

Grant and Grandpa about to blow out his candle, he made such a cute birthday boy!

Enjoying one of his books with Grandma and Grandpa.

This is one of Grant's favorite presents which we actually gave him about a week ago one day when he was bored and cranky. He's just kickin it on his fire truck. He's got his headband on so he can fit in the next time we go to walmart :)

So after all the birthday food, fun and festivities, Grant had a real rough time falling asleep that night. Grant never cries in his crib at night before going to bed, he seriously probably has less than 5 times since he was 2 months old. So on Saturday he was screaming after I put him to bed, I checked on him twice, gave him a binky and finally just went to take my shower and let Ryan listen to him cry. He was asleep when I got out but then woke up 45 min later crying again. Finally he went to sleep for the night after some coaxing and a couple of his cuddly toys were in the crib with him. We think it was from all the fun and the dramatic increase in grease and fat in his diet compared to a normal day (he had some fries and burger at Red Robin, and then cake and whipped cream when he got home). Needless to say, Grant didn't get anymore of his birthday cake and I made use of the leftovers to make the yummy parfaits seen above. Sorry buddy, maybe next year you can have more than one piece of your birthday cake.