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“Just testing it,” Mel replies teasingly, handing her the upper half of the little gingerbread man.
“For poison?” Abby says with all the seriousness in the world.
Mel makes awhat the hellface, shooting me another look. “Really?”
I shrug. “Important life skills.”
A hand tugs my hair, getting crumbs all over me. “Life skills, Mommy.”
And while I’m mostly joking, it is true that I taught Abby to never take anything from a stranger. Food in particular, not without Mel or I trying it first.
Last year we learned she had a tree nut allergy when she broke out into hives and started coughing after helping her Nana make kolache. Fortunately, she didn’t take a bite—her picky eating habits a blessing in disguise—so we were able to get some Benadryl in her and get her over to the pediatrician before her symptoms worsened. They sent her home with some steroids to take for a couple days, and a script for an EpiPen.
Mel and I now carry one on us at all times, and there’s one in the kitchen here, as well as in the medicine cabinet upstairs. I have a couple in my house too, just in case, even though both houses as well as her grandparents’ are a nut-free zone.
While she’s old enough to know she can’t eat nuts, she’s not old enough to know to check the ingredients or allergy warnings on food labels, much less understand the bigger words, or just how “sick” she could get.
Nor does she know to ask if, say, someone leaves a tray of cookies out.
Not that she has to worry about thathere, but better safe than sorry.
And while we’ve done our best to teach her to always ask first before sneaking a treat, she’s still a kid. Kids break rules. And it’s not like we can tell her she could die if she eats something she’s not supposed to.
She’s picky enough with food as it is. We don’t need herafraidof eating completely.
So to say it hasn’t been a little nerve-wracking now that she’s in kindergarten is an understatement.
“Daddy, down,” she says, bopping me on the head. More crumbs fly, and I realize Mel gave her the other half of the cookie.
Crouching down, I ease her off my shoulders, and give a little flick to one of the fuzzy ears curving up from her head.
“You gonna let me have a bite?”
She bunches her face, whipping the cookie out of my reach. “Get your own, slick!”
And then she’s off, skipping out of the kitchen.
Mel snorts, and I shake my head.
This kid.
“So…” Mel says, grabbing the spatula from the plate to transfer the new batch of cookies onto the cooling rack.
“So what?” I say, shaking the crumbs out of my hair.
“Who is she?”
I freeze. Then, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
From the living room, I hear the TV click on—or maybe Abby just turned up the volume. Christmas music filters into the kitchen, echoed horribly by my daughter’s overdramatized attempt at singing along.
“Mhm,” Mel says, clearly not having it.
Bypassing her for the fridge, I grab a water bottle, unscrew it and guzzle down nearly half the bottle.
“I told you to get yourself out there, so I don’t know why you’re being so cagey about it.”
I sigh. “Newsflash, Mel. Not everything has to do with you.”
