Merry Christmas! Here's Your Hives!

Last night as Liam was eating dinner we noticed he was rubbing and tugging on his left ear a lot. So much, that the whole thing was red. I decided I would call the pediatrician in the morning and find out if 7 days into 10 days of antibiotics, if he should still be tugging on his ear so much that it turns red. Only, it didn't stop there. When we went to put him to bed, I noticed that his armpits were all red. If he had been wearing a red shirt, I might have just attributed it to that, but he had been wearing a white shirt, so I thought it was odd. But then this morning, I was taking his pj's off, and his entire body was red. Red tummy. Red spots all over his legs and neck. Red on the back of his head. Uh oh. That can't be normal! It was pretty scary looking but my first thought was that it was probably an allergic reaction to his antibiotic. Took him to the pediatrician this morning - yep! He's allergic. Why not - he loves doing everything Zachary does, and Zachary is allergic to penicillin, so Liam should be too I guess. Honestly, if my kids are going to be allergic to something, I'd much rather it be something like penicillin than any sort of food - especially things like nuts or eggs. So even though he is only 7 days into the 10 days of medicine, they told me to stop giving it to him so we can let the rash clear up (gonna take about a week they said - lovely!) and then we'll go back next week for the appointment we already had scheduled (it was to have been his 2-week re-check for the ear infection) to see if his ears have gotten better or worse since stopping the medicine. His left ear still has some fluid, but it didn't look like it was infected, so hopefully it will just go away - dry out or evaporate or whatever.

On the lighter side, on Friday we had dinner with some of my oldest friends - one of them & I go all the way back to 1st grade, and the other one goes back to 6th grade. We got together with our husbands and our kids for a little Christmas dinner. Before we sat down, the hostess's husband said a very nice blessing. When he was finished, Zachary blurted out, "But that's the wrong blessing!!!" You don't hear that every day! See, for as long as I can remember, my grandfather has always said the same blessing at every family meal - word for word. We started using it at our house too, and generally Zachary is the one who likes to say it each night. Occasionally he will appoint one of us to say it, but most of the time he likes to say it. So you can imagine the look of surprise on everyone's face when Zachary tells them they said the wrong blessing. My friend was so sweet though - she asked Zachary if he had a blessing he would like to say, and so Zachary said Pappy's blessing too. I felt horrible, but hopefully nobody was offended. At his age, he often doesn't know what he's talking about anyway.