Bitten

As a first time mom to a toddler, I am relatively unparanoid about most things these days. A lot has happened lately to help toughen me up:

• She's had almost constant ear infections since we returned from our trip to St. Louis for Labor Day
• I've watched her fall from the top of an indoor play structure at the day care
• Despite my generally strict dietary regimen for her, the day care has managed to feed her chocolate chip cookies and candy
• She crawls up the stairs to the second floor in our house whenever the mood strikes her and we have yet to purchase any type of gate for the top or the bottom of the stairs

But, I was so NOT prepared for what I would see when I picked her up from the day care on Friday!

On Thursday night, before she went to bed, I noticed that her right ear was red. It didn't seem like a big deal though. Then, on Friday morning, it was still red and maybe a little swollen, I thought. My husband dropped her off at school as normal Then around mid-morning, I got a call from the day care. They wanted to know if I had noticed her ear was red, hot, and swollen. I told them that I had. We talked a bit longer about how it was probably just an insect bite and Benadryl would probably clear everything up. Well, when I got there and my child looked up at me, I almost didn't recognize her!! Her ear was literally standing out from her head at a 90 degree angle! It was bright red and about the size of her hand! I felt sorry for her but, the truth is, she just looked really, really funny. And the people at the day care said that it had improved over the course of the day. I'd never seen anything like it in real life. Her left hand was also really swollen and red. I stopped by CVS on the way home and got her some Benadryl. On Saturday morning, the swelling and redness of her ear was going away but her hand still looked pretty bad. I took her to the doctor on Saturday morning (for the third of a series of shots for her latest double ear infection). The doctor seemed to think that it was just mosquito bites and nothing was infected or anything. She suggested that we continue with the Benadryl and just give it some time. By yesterday, you could hardly tell her ear had been swollen and it had gone down enough that you could actually see where she had been bitten on the ear. Her hand was still puffy though.

In all this, I'm not even sure my child noticed what has been going on. Maybe she's preoccupied by the fact that she is currently cutting her two top, front teeth (FINALLY!). But all I know is that when we got in the car this morning to take her to school, I saw a mosquito buzzing around the front seat. I had but once mission - that mosquito had to die!!