Allergy alert

Boy, it looks like Henry has acquired his sister's peanut allergy. And what a strange way to find out. We ventured out to the farmer's market, and the first booth we saw was the "homemade ice cream" vendor. Immediately Lucy wanted a vanilla ice cream cone. Ok, sure, but that means Henry wants one. I got her to give me a mini scoop because the cone is the most important part to Henry. It wasn't more than a minute or two (How many licks is that?) till Lucy started whining and panicking that the ice cream doesn't taste good? She was grabbing her ear, and her tongue, asking for water to wash away the yucky taste. of course the water was in the car, but she was desperate enough we walked back. I took the ice cream cone, and Lucy took a big drink of water. She denied itching still. But a couple minutes later I looked at her, and sure enough hives around her lips had revealed itself. I decided to walk back to the ice cream vendor to take a look at her menu. Nothing on the menu looked as if it would contain peanuts. But I asked anyway. Ah, her rocky road had peanuts in it. I told the woman that Lucy has a peanut allergy, and she was fine, but for other kids she might want to consider having separate scoopers for the peanut ice cream. She said that she had "clean scoops" if anyone asked about allergies. Well, even us allergy moms forget to ask these sort of questions. We think Vanilla ice cream should be safe. There were customers behind me, so I decided to walk away, (it was all very calm and nice), instead of giving her a lesson in cross contamination.

A minute later I looked down at Henry who had finished his cone (to the best of his ability)and found him with a face half full of hives. WHAT?!?! This is exactly what happened with Lucy at this age....even though she would have a fairly dramatic response, I would assume it was that "contact" irritation many kids get with strawberries or tomatoes. But even with Henry's pale fair skin, he has never had hives. Certainly not that many. So now I guess we'll go ahead and make our house a peanut free zone, and I have to turn into "that mom" who has to ask you if you washed your hands, and be playground police if your kid is eating their favorite peanut butter sandwich and smearing it all over the slide. I'm very thankful that Lucy has never been close to having anaphylaxis over it, although once I thought she might. Luckily removing the source, washing it off, and sometimes a dose of Benadryl has done the trick. However, all exposures have been contact with peanuts, or eating a food that came in contact with peanuts, not ingesting actual peanuts. I suppose it could be something else, but Henry eats plenty of peanut free ice cream and ice cream cones at home without any problems! And since Lucy is old enough now to notice when something is going wrong, she stops eating immediately. Henry kept on eating. Our allergist said you really have to treat it like any consumption could be the one that changes them from having a mild reaction to suddenly becoming severely allergic.