After a brief turn for the better last night and this morning, we're now back to taking it one sip of Pedialyte at a time over here. Even popsicles are too wild and crazy for this party. And the less said about that banana, the better.
Fuck this week. I'm out. Let's meet up on Monday for a do-over, deal?
Warning: This is probably going to be the grossest thing I have ever written about on the Internet. And I have written some gross fucking things. So, proceed with caution. Or don't. Just leave. Run away! Look out, behind you! It's a compulsive oversharing blogger in her pajamas! OH MY GOD WE'RE DOOMED.
Yesterday afternoon, Ezra shuffled from his room post-nap. "My tummy hurts," he whined. We had a little chat about Poop, Do You Need To Go Do That, and I expertly diagnosed him with Who The Hell Knows, But Let's Try Some Cuddling On The Couch.
So we cuddled. On the couch. Which is where we were when he suddenly bolted upright and vomited on me. A entire container of raspberries came up in repeated waves of bright reddish-magenta-colored puke all over my chest and lap and then the couch and on the floor as I picked him up and hauled ass towards the bathroom, where it also just. Kept. Coming. Holy. Fucking. SHIT.
When it was over and the bathroom walls and surfaces were as coated with splattered raspberry hork as we both were, he burst into terrified tears and put his arms out for a hug.
This is one of the things that you know, logically, going into parenthood, is a distinct and likely possibility. I mean, kids get sick and throw up and when they're little they have no idea what's happening to them, and no instinct to run for the bathroom and barf into the toilet like a civilized person. As a former child yourself, you probably have at least one memory of a truamatic throwing-up event in your bed or on the floor or all over the backseat of the car.
You probably DON'T, however, have any memory of cleaning up the carnage after the fact, because you didn't fucking have to. No, you got cleaned up and put to bed and left to wallow in your own snuffly misery with a popsicle while your parents dealt with the rest of it, desperately praying to the Clorox gods that they would escape coming down with it themselves. Because even if they do get violently ill they'll STILL have to take care of your helpless ass and cater to your every Saltine-and-Ginger-Ale-related whim.
So I totally had one of those moments of Hideous Soul-Breaking Clarity while peeling off my vomit-soaked clothing and giving us both a bath, while I spread a sheet across the freshly-scrubbed (but still rank-smelling) couch so he could lie down and watch Blue's Clues. I put a trash can next to him (which would be repeatedly ignored and/or missed during the next five or six bouts of vomit that were still to come) and went back to wiping off befouled surfaces that like, did not even MAKE SENSE, from a PHYSICS PERSPECTIVE, because HOW DID HE MANAGE TO VOMIT ON THE UNDERSIDE OF THE SINK COUNTER.
I meticulously scraped smelly day-glo goo from in between the planks of the hardwoods, all while realizing that 1) no one was going to come help me, and 2) no one was ever going remember that I once did this for them.
And that I would do it again, and let's be honest, probably will.
And I'm more okay with that than I ever thought I'd be.
P.S. Except for the part when I realized the baby -- who was scooting around on the living room floor during our initial frantic dash to the bathroom -- had something in his mouth and it was part of a raspberry and OH MY GOD THAT PART WAS NOT OKAY AND MADE ME CRY NO NO NO.
