So Evelyn is allergic to soy. Eating it makes her violently, even spectacularly ill. Think Linda Blair in The Exorcist, but with more chunks of egg yolk and bits of green beans.
This didn't really catch us by surprise. The last time that she had tofu, she barfed everywhere, but it had been hours since she'd eaten, and who knows? She could have had a bad piece of watermelon, eaten grass at the park, or had a bug. To paraphrase Shakespeare, one data point doth not an allergy make. No, I had to be
sure before relegating her to an existence devoid of tofu, soy meatballs, tofu pups, and soy milk. And by sure I mean: I had to be soaked from head to toe with baby vomit at least twice to be convinced that it was tofu that was causing the reaction.
My little trooper never cried during the whole projectile vomiting thing, but she did give me a look that said, "Mother, honestly, clean yourself up. What is this, Skid Row?" (She can be kind of tough on me.) In a coincidence that makes me wonder what kind of serial killer I was in a past life to deserve this, we had also run out of baby shampoo that day, so I had to wash her without the benefit of soap. Not ideal when your kid is caked in puke.
I now have a new appreciation of parents who have children with multiple allergies. In addition to the obvious pain in the neck of not being able to eat normal stuff like wheat or milk, these parents have probably been vomited on more times than they can count. Blessed are they that clean up puke, to paraphrase the Bible.
