Allergic to Christmas?

[om2]

I love the holiday season. I love the decorations, the lights, the baking, yes, even the wrapping. This year however, I may have discovered one thing about the holiday season that isn't making me merry...I think it's my Christmas tree. We brought it home on Sunday. Monday morning my Wee Two woke with a terrible cough. I found that my throat was bugging me but no cough so we took it easy and didn't leave the house except for evening yoga. By Tuesday we still weren't better, our throats hurt, but we had no other symptoms, Wee Two was looking forward to her first Zoo Class so I decided we'd go and we could always duck out if she got worse. Funny thing happened, we both felt better and had a great day. We came back home and started feeling awful again. Yesterday we had an appointment to tour a preschool. Same thing happened. We felt great as soon as we left the house. We even ran some errands. Back home...well you get the idea. Then last night I'm at my MIL's house with a few of her friends and one complained of weird allergy symptoms. My MIL asked if she had a live Christmas tree in her house or a fake one. A light bulb went off in my head.

This morning I lost my voice and had to mime conversations with my children. Wee One looked so sad at me and I tried to explain I was fine except my throat hurt, I had no voice, and my chest was feeling tight. That's when I decided to Google Christmas Tree allergies and found an article that claimed fresh trees cary mold spores. By Day 4 the mold spores start to multiply. By Day 14 the mold spores on the tree are five times more. Whoa, I definitely know I have bad reactions to mold. I took a 30 minute walk around the block. Yeah, I felt better during my walk. Trees definitely belong in nature and not my house. Christmas has got me all choked up.