Oh, what a day....

We had quite the day yesterday. The girls and I made some Christmas cookies yesterday morning, which was fun. I cheated a little this year and had bought some Mara-safe sugar cookie mix through our buying club. We have 6 boxes to have fun with! As much as I love baking from scratch, I wanted to be able to make many different kinds and it's hard to do that with two little ones with short attention spans.



Anyway- we made snowman, and the girls decorated with mini-chocolate chips, dried apples and raisins. Then we made ornaments, in which the girls used LOTS of sprinkles! Mara is sooo careful spooning them onto her cookie, while Analese also sprinkled the table, floor, and everything else within reach :) ( I think this was mainly because she was trying to sneak as many into her mouth as she could!)



So I thought that was the highlight of our day, until I was cleaning up the kitchen. I happened to glance into the dining room and saw Mara reaching for Analese's bowl of Zoe cereal (which contains both wheat and soy). I screamed hysterically for her to drop it (probably a little too hysterically, but I wanted to get the point across) and ran over to her. I asked her if she had eaten any, and she said yes. I checked her mouth for crumbs, etc. and couldn't see anything so I really didn't know if she had really eaten it or not. All I could do now was wait.

I should say that Mara is usually really good about eating her own food, but two things confused her yesterday. For one, we had just gotten her a box of Perky-Os, which are safe for her. And two, I was out of bowls that I normally use for Analese so I put her cereal in a bowl that Mara sometimes uses.

Anyway, Mara's last reactions to soy occurred about an hour after she ate it. After an hour was up and no reaction, I gave her some lunch (spaghetti and meatballs -what was I thinking?) and then she nursed and went to sleep.

She woke up happy, asking for a snack, and I really thought we were in the clear.

Until she began to vomit EVERYWHERE. It was amazing just how quickly she got sick. She was playing, standing a few feet from me when all of a sudden, she projectile vomited all over the rug. She turned to me and got me covered. She seemed confused and kind of turned again as more came up. I tell ya, our living room floor was completely covered in vomit. I raced her to the bathroom, and had her sit on her potty and calm down. Once she was calm, I had to calm Analese down-who had one drop of vomit on her and needed to be changed immediately (nevermind that both Mara and I were completely covered)

I left the girls in the bathroom and went out to clean up the living room before the dog and cats get to it. After that I went into the bathroom and found poor Mara, who had crawled into the bathtub and was just sitting there. My poor baby! I felt so bad for her. I cleaned us both up, set up the couch with lots of towels and plopped her on it.

It lasted a few minutes before it started again. I'll spare you the details, but Mara continued to vomit nonstop for the next four hours. It wasn't fun. We went through every towel we owned, and Mara ended up on the couch in just a diaper.

At one point Mara just laid her head straight down on the couch-she was so miserable. When Greg came home, he asked her if she ate something she shouldn't have, and she nodded and said "sister, sister, belly" over and over again.

Although it was awful at the time, I feel very fortunate that it only four hours, as her last two soy reactions were nonstop vomiting for 8+. Her last reaction also followed with diarrhea for a week. This morning she had a yucky diaper which appeared to have blood in it.

Soy is definitely a big issue with Mara, and we won't be trialing that anytime soon! Not a fun day at all.