In The Trenches

Since my last post, we have had some drama around here.   It all started when Casey went out of town for four days.   Ok, that wasn’t the start of the drama, just the backdrop.   It really started when, Tuesday afternoon, Kenny started projectile vomiting all over the bathroom.   He did make it to the toilet, but not exactly in the toilet, which was pretty messy, but the effort was a gallant one.   I thought it was some bad milk he’s had (he found a sippy cup from the morning with some warm chocolate milk in it), so I let his tummy rest and then gave him a bland dinner.  

Oops.   That came up less than an hour later.   We were reading books in bed and he said, “I think I’m going to throw   up again.” I was nursing Cooper in the bed with him, so I handed him a little bowl that he uses for playdough and *wham* out came more vomit than I’ve ever seen outside of Poltergeist.   It splashed out of the bowl and across the floor, and the sweet little guy tried to run to the bathroom before the rest came and ended up dropping the bowl full of throw-up all over his floor.   Then yakked all the way to the bathroom.   With tears streaming down his face, he heaved and heaved, then I cleaned him up and carried him to bed.   Cooper was, by this time, screaming in rage at having been dumped on the floor, not too far from the wet mess, so that I could attend to Kenny in the bathroom.   We blotted it up and Kenny passed out.  

Did I mention that right before we got his pjs on, we discovered that we were out of pull-ups?   He’s been potty-trained since September, but still wears a pull-up to bed – rather needlessly, as 99.9% of the time it’s dry in the morning.   So I put him in two pairs of “unders” and crossed my fingers.   Oops, again, and he was in bed with me at 3AM, soaked to the skin.   I changed him and settled him under the covers, and Cooper woke up.   I nursed him, climbed back in bed with a snoring Kenny and passed out myself.  

The next morning, Kenny threw up one more time for good measure (he downed a full glass of tepid water while I wasn’t looking), then improved as the day went on.   He even took his first nap in nearly 8 months!   I though that Cooper and I were in the clear, but last night at 2AM, I woke with a seasick feeling.   I got up four or five times, didn’t throw up, and went back to bed.   Then I got up and threw up like there was a demon in me – all over the bathroom sink, toilet, floor and myself.   Kenny and Cooper slept through three hours of that, and I finally got it all out and everything cleaned up by 6.   At which time Kenny woke up, very hungry, and asked for breakfast.   I convinced him to watch a few cartoons so I could go to sleep.  

That lasted for only a little while before Cooper woke up.   I almost fainted when I lifted him out of the crib, and had to sit in the floor with him for a good ten minutes before I could pick him back up and get him changed and nursed.   Then I put him right down again for his morning nap – a little early, but it was self defence!   Casey arrived home at 9AM, bleary-eyed from a red-eye flight, took one look at me and sent me to bed.   But not before mentioning that I was the only family member who didn’t get a flu shot this year.   “Lazy-girl,” I mumbled, and  then slept another three hours.   In the meantime, he called my dad, who came over to help for the rest of the day.  

Dad was a trooper, even setting up his laptop next to Kenny and his playdough so that he could get a little work done in the midst of the circus.   The two of them went to the grocery store for some Gatorade at one point, and I napped again with Cooper.   Casey got home at 8 and is now snoring with Kenny in his bed.   Speaking of troopers, he’s been up for nearly 48 hours from  his crazy travel schedule, and gave up any possibility of a nap this morning when he came in to shower and change clothes in order to take care of me and the kiddos!

I’m a little better now (at least I’m not tossing my cookies!) but I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.   I kind-of look like it, too.   So far Cooper hasn’t done anything more than the run-of-the-mill spitting up (maybe a little more than usual, but my milk can’t be that stellar-quality today, now can it??), so I’m hoping that his little body is spared the ravage that Kenny and I endured.   Casey, too, seems to be in the clear for now, but he’s so exhausted it’s hard to tell.

So now I’m going to bed.   Just looking at the computer screen is making me queasy…