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This evening Caleb and Micah were having their evening snack. Caleb was having crackers with peanut butter and a couple chocolate chips while sitting in his booster. Micah was having plain crackers sitting in his high chair across the table from him. I was checking my email.

When I let Micah down from his perch, I thought I smelled peanut butter on Micah's hands, but couldn't be sure. Ten to twenty minutes later, Micah started crying when Caleb bopped him over the head with some toy and I decided this was a good time to start getting ready for bed. So I picked Micah up and noticed the skin around his eyes was red. I thought it was from crying (he's pretty adamant) so I took him to go brush his teeth (he's got two and two halves now). But in the bright light of the bathroom I could see hives developing on his face, right before my very eyes!

Just then, Bryan arrived home from school. We called the family practice on-call doctor (I always say nothing bad ever happens during office hours) and she advised us to go ahead and take him to the ER on base. Apparently sometimes breathing symptoms can have a delayed reaction and serious effects. So Bryan took him to the ER. The nurse repeatedly checked on Micah while they sat in the waiting room to make sure his symptoms were not progressing.

By the time they saw the doctor (less than an hour from when they left the house, probably an hour and a half after I noticed the reaction) the redness had cleared. The doctor examined him and sent him home with a precautionary bottle of Benadryl in the event the symptoms return.

My only guess to the cause is that Caleb shared some of his crackers with Micah without my noticing. It was a brief scare, but Micah is fine and we'll just have to a little more careful about sharing during snack time and what other people give Micah to eat.