My Little Rose: MONTANA DAY 2: Day of (Near) Disasters

The day started off okay. Andrea woke up at 4:30 in the morning, but Grama usually gets up at that time for work anyway, so she took over Andrea's care, and let Mommy go back to bed. In fact, Grama got Andrea to do something I've been waiting for: she finally started holding her own bottle!

***

But when I got up around 8:00, I knew something was wrong with Andrea. She was really cranky, and had an extremely swollen upper lip. We thought maybe she had bit her lip or something.

***

Then, when Daddy gave her the next bottle of milk, she started to wail, and rub her eyes a lot. We thought she was just really tired, or kind of messed up because of the time change; but, suddenly, she projectile vomited twice on Daddy!

***

I took her to the bathtub, and stripped her down, and washed her up. But now she was wheezing, and coughing, and rubbing her eyes; and she would not stop crying. We decided to rush her to the nearby clinic. As we headed for the door, she projectile vomited two times on me, but I didn't care--we were getting her to a doctor!

***

They were great at the clinic--they took her in right away, and kept us near the nurses until a doctor could see us. Andrea's blood pressure was low, and she had no fever; her symptoms made us all think she was having some kind of severe allergic reaction to something. Grama Marty was very upset, because she had peanut butter on toast while feeding Andrea, and thought it might have gotten on her fingers; you see, Grama had a sister who died from an allergic reaction to peanuts. Our other suspected culprit was the dogs; Grama had taken Andrea out and let her pet them and play with them, just before her symptoms started.

***

Well, we were right. The doctor said Andrea had the classic symptoms of an anaphylactic reaction: swollen lips, a distended stomach, vomiting, red face, wheezing, etc. The doctor gave her a prescription for Zyrtec liquid, and suggested we talk to our doctor about allergy testing for Andrea (although I already asked our doctor for this, and she said no, not until 4 years old) and the possibility of her needing an epi-pen in the future. The doctor wasn't sure what caused the reaction; but we think it was the dogs, because I've had peanut butter around her many times with no problems. Also, she's never actually petted a dog before; we imagine she petted the dogs, rubbed her eyes and put her fingers in her mouth as babies will do, and BOOM--massive reaction. [We kept Andrea away from the dogs for the rest of the trip, and she was fine. Also, Mommy was very allergic to dogs and cats when she was little, too.]

***

After we picked up the Zyrtec, she was already doing better (probably the fresh air), and she was fine after we gave her the medicine. We were all emotionally exhausted, so we took a nap.

***

In the early afternoon, things settled down for a bit. Andrea, Daddy and Grampa relaxed on the patio while Mommy and Grama did some shopping, and went to pick up a baby life jacket from Grama's friend. Grampa taught Andrea a new version of Patty Cake, which she perfected as the week went on.

And here's a nice picture I got later, of Andrea and Daddy sitting by the pond in Grama and Grampa's front yard.

***

While Mommy and Grama were out shopping, we saw lots of smoke in the sky. Grama also got a call from her work saying many of the people had to go to their homes, because a wild fire had started in the hills just outside town, and they needed to evacuate. [You'll read more about the fire after.]

Mommy spotted an interesting gift for Daddy while she was shopping. In honor of Daddy's valiant effort in keeping calm during the baptism of vomit earlier, she got him this:

"Polly Pukey": it's a kids' juice bottle where you pull the girl's ponytail, and she pretend-vomits into her hand. Gross! :))

***

Soon it's dinner, and I guess things had been going too smoothly that afternoon, so it was time for more chaos. Andrea was chewing on a celery stick, and managed to bite off a big hunk before we could stop her. Now she was choking! Grama grabbed her out of the high chair, flipped her over, and whacked her on the back a few times--and out popped the celery. Geez! Andrea was very upset, but just fine. She was crying a bit the whole time, anyway, so it wasn't a true choking event--but still, very scary!

***

So, what do we do for our after-dinner recreation? We all wanted to get a closer look at the wildfire! The wildfire was first reported around 11:40 that morning, and about 4300 acres had burned so far. It tore through the hills and forest, and we had seen smoke all day--it was only about 5 miles outside the city! But we were not in danger. First we drove out to the airport, to get a view of the fire in the distance. Then, we drove out of the way and came up from behind the wildfire area, and drove right through the edge of it. On the map below, you can see I-90; and that's where we drove through the fire area.

[The following pictures were taken from the Billings Gazette newspaper.]

The fire was mostly out in the area we drove through, but there were still a lot of hot spots--it looked like little camp fires burning all over the hills on either side of the truck. It was quite eerie: the smoke in the air was like thick fog, and the air was hot when we rolled down the windows to try and take some pictures (which didn't work out). But this is what it would have looked like if you had been up in the air, looking down on our little truck on the highway. See the planes dropping fire-retardant chemicals? We saw them landing, loading, and taking off from the airport when we were there.

By the time we got home, it was dark out. We could see the glow of the fire in the hills at the end of Grama and Grampa's street. And this photo shows exactly how it looked to us.

In the end, I heard only one home was destroyed, and two outbuildings, and everyone was okay. The fire was well-contained within a couple days.