"eye of the tiger."

so we'd previously determined that ellie is quite sensitive to bug bites when some time ago she got one on her shin that was hot, hard and very swollen for several days. she scratched the crap out of it and still has tiny scabs and what will likely be a scar. i have pretty impressive reactions to most bug bites, especially ant bites, so we weren't altogether surprised or all that worried.

we were not, however, prepared for this:


this is what my precious, beautiful child looked like this evening at about 8 p.m. AFTER two hours in the emergency room that included a shot of epinephrine and a shot of decadron. when we went to the emergency room, her eye was twice this big, twice this swollen and twice this terrible. neither landon nor i could look at her long without wanting to cry.

after much contemplation, we figured that she must have been attacked by mosquitoes last night while watering the plants with delana. she has a pretty intense bite on her left wrist (see picture below) that kylah can remember seeing last night before we left their house. she also has several on each of her legs. i never noticed any of them until this morning when i got her up for church. her eye was swollen then, but not anywhere near this bad. i took her to church, we watched her and we gave her benadryl. everything seemed to be OK so we came home and put her down for a nap. she woke up about 4 p.m. looking like rocky after his worst fight. i immediately took her to the living room and told landon we were going to the er. he didn't argue. his mouth was actually agape for quite some time. it was a terrible sight.

she didn't act upset all day, before, during (excluding having her eye poked at and needles jammed into her legs) or after the er experience. she just played and blabbed and laughed as usual. it was really quite amazing, as a matter of fact.

her eye started opening up pretty quick after the shots. like i said, these photos are about an hour after we got home from the hospital. we ate dinner, played for awhile and then took a long, playful bath before i laid her down. that was about 9:15.

i'm trying to decide whether or not i should go in her room and see if i can catch a massive, horrible swarm of bugs that only comes out to attack my baby when i'm not there.

talk about heartbreaking.

"it's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight/
risin' up to the challenge of our rival/
and the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night/
and he's watchin' us all with the eye of the tiger."