Halloween - a month later

I just got scolded by Lindsay since we haven't put up Daniel Halloween pictures yet so luckily we had our camera cord with us! It's before Thanksgiving so it's not that late, right? First of all, we still don't know 100% for sure what caused Daniel's hives but the ER doctor and our family doctor believe that it was a reaction to the medication he was taking for his ear infection since it had penicillin in it. We'll see and just be careful. We went to a pumpkin patch and Daniel tried picking up every pumpkin there. They had a huge blow up pumpkin and Daniel kept pointing at it yelling "BALL! BALL!" He eventually found the small pumpkins and would not put one down. When we carved the pumpkin, he wanted to use the scraper to get out all the seeds. He dug right in and pulled out seeds, even though it was only a couple at a time. Then we decided that we'd have him be Danielson from the movie Karate Kid, since we call him Danielson. My mom made the costume and we bought paper to print on and iron on so we had the real Miyagi logo and the headband. He was so cute! So here are some pictures:

One thing after another

Poor Daniel. We went to Utah for Ali & Phil's wedding (everything was beautiful) but Daniel managed to get sick the last day we were there and I was sick the whole next week with the flu. That Monday after we got back, Matt took him to the doctor and he had an ear infection so he was just starting to get over that on Friday when he started getting a cough and fever and it would appear as though he caught my cold. I love that he would just snuggle with me but I hate that he was feeling so yucky! Luckily, he was running around like his normal self early enough on Saturday that we were able to still do Halloween festivities for about an hour or so. (Halloween pics to follow in another post). He just started acting like his normal self Sunday afternoon. Then, when I got home from work yesterday (Monday), I noticed little red marks on his legs and sides. They looked a little like bug bites without being raised at all. We called the doctor and they thought it might be chicken pox since he'd had flu like symptoms the day before, which is apparently what happens right before the bumps show up. They made an appointment for the next day and he didn't act any different so we didn't think anything of it. After dinner though he started itching so we tried one of those Aveeno oatmeal baths to help and it did for a little bit. After we put him down to bed, about 2 hours later he woke up screaming. He was covered in hives - face, swollen ears, arms, back, neck, legs, sides, feet. He was itching so bad that he was breaking the skin and bleeding. So of course we took him to the ER because I get allergic reactions to aspirin that make my throat close and I didn't need him to stop breathing on us. We got there around 10, the triage nurse saw him aroun 10:30 and diagnosed it as an allergic reaction but his beathing and heart were normal so we had to wait. We finally got in to see the doctor around 12:45. They gave him benadryl, something I didn't know he was old enough for, and had him stay for about an hour to watch. The bumps weren't raised anymore so they sent him home and we have to give him more benadryl every 6 hours for 3 days, waking him up to do it if we have to. What's making us (mostly Matt since he's the one home) crazy is that we can't figure out for the life of us what caused it. Matt literally went through everything that he ate, drank, picked up off the floor and there was nothing that he hadn't had before. The doctor did say that it's not uncommon to have peanut butter dozens of times before developing an allergy to it. So, I guess we'll just have to pay more attention for a while to figure out what it is.