allergic to April

This is the time of year when Sister becomes the epitome of pitiful. Her eyes swell out of her head, the skin around her eyes chaps from the tears, and she becomes a skinny allergy machine. She's learned that she just simply can't touch her face if she's been outside. She has to shower when she gets up in the morning, then again when she gets in to wash off the pollen. She takes the path past the least amount of flowers when she walks out to her car in the mornings. She just says, "I'm allergic to April."

The Hater and I have seasonal allergies, too, but we'll be the first to admit they're not anywhere as close to as bad as Sister's are. I take loratidine year round and add an extra prescription allergy medicine for March until things die off again. The Hater takes three allergy medicines this time of year, too.

We assumed that Baby would inherit some sort of seasonal allergies, too, but we were hoping she wouldn't grow into them until many years from now.

If you remember, Baby has been on antihistamines for several weeks now because of the welts. She's been on Singulair plus Zyrtec, which has made her a little cranky, but relatively fine with it all. We've been none the wiser, too.

Well, last night Mom of the Year forgot to give her the Zyrtec. I remembered about it after she'd already gone to bed, but The Hater and I decided we shouldn't wake her up to give it to her. She woke up later in the night and we decided not to give it to her... Well, this morning she woke up in a fairly good mood. As I was changing her she scrunched her face and looked at me funny before sneezing out a huge wad of snot. That was the beginning of several sneezes followed by several Tablespoons of snot followed by little hands rubbing it all over her face. I gave her the Zyrtec before I took her to day care this morning with apologies, of course.

I really figured she'd be better within a couple of hours, and that's exactly what I told the day care lady when I handed Snotty to her this morning.

This afternoon I picked up Snotty. Her upper lip and cheeks were chapped from the ever-flowing nasal fountain paired with the extra saliva of teeth-cutting (because it'd be too easy if we only had one mountain to climb at a time).

Next week we're going to have to take her off of everything in anticipation of her appointment with the pediatric allergist. I totally dread the experience ahead for her. I can't imagine facing this time of year without the precious antihistamines.

I remember telling the pediatrician last year at her three month appointment that I thought she had the same seasonal allergies that The Hater and I had. He told me that allergies develop after continued exposure and the probability of her having actual "allergies" were slim to none because she hadn't really been around long enough to be overly exposed to things. I questioned this, but, hey, he was the doctor with all that fancy schoolin'.

Baby took her antihistamine about 13 hours late and paid the price of her inherited allergy to April. If they tell me again this year that she doesn't have seasonal allergies I'm going to tell them they're crazy, and I may just say it as plain as that. I've since added "seasonal allergies" to her list of complaints for the specialist.

You will hear every tenacious detail of 1/3 of our home being off of antihistamines soon. I can only imagine what she'll be thinking... My Precious! O my Precious! We wants it, we needs it. Must have the Precious. They stole it from us. Wicked, tricksy, false! Give us the Precious!