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It's been a messy few days around our house; the kind of messes that even a seasoned mom has a hard time with. We've all had a 24-hour stomach bug, one after another.
It started with Ella, who was at her grandparents' house for the night. She started throwing up at 3:30 in the morning. When I found out, I felt horribly guilty about not being there to take care of her while she was sick. But the guilty feeling passed when I realized I was able to sleep through the night rather than be up with her, cleaning up the mess. When I arrived to pick up the girls, Ella proudly announced that she had "frode" up.
I can handle just about all the messes that go along with motherhood. I've yet to meet a poopy diaper that fazed me. Blood doesn't bother me either. In college, I was the one people came to to get bandaged up. While others were passing out at the sight of the blood, I was able to calmly clean the wound and put on a dressing.
Vomit is another matter all together. My stomach turns at the slightest whiff of throw up. I've thrown up while cleaning up someone else's puke. Fortunately, my husband doesn't have the same reaction.
While I escaped having to clean up Ella's mess, I didn't get so lucky when Lily, my toddler, got sick. She was with her grandmother (poor grandmother) when she threw up the first time, in the car as they pulled in our driveway. I got her cleaned up and in jammies. I was sitting on the sofa cuddling her when Ella yelled from the bathroom that she had had an accident. My mother-in-law went in to clean up Ella and the puddle on the floor. I walked in a few minutes later to help. As I came through the door, Ella escaped from the tub and ran to me just as Lily, who was in my arms, started projectile vomiting - all over Ella.
So now we had Lily screaming because she was throwing up and Ella sobbing because she was covered in it. I wanted to let loose with every curse word I knew, but I couldn't because my mother-in-law and children were there. Screaming curses silently in my head just isn't the same. I went out and grabbed Brandon to help clean up the disaster area.
The next day I told friends that it would have been funny had I not been in the middle of it. They all took that as permission to laugh at me and the situation.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the end of the fun. I put Lily in her crib a while later. About a half hour after that, I heard her start crying again. I went in to check on her and found her sitting in a puddle of vomit. I grabbed her and ran from the room as I started gagging. Again, I got Brandon to clean up the mess.
The next time, Lily actually threw up on me, all over my shirt. I pulled it off and spent the next hour wearing jeans and a bra around the house.
Ella, once she recovered from the trauma of being covered in vomit, took great delight in the proceedings. She counted the number of times Lily threw up. She also told everyone she talked to that her sister was throwing up. Only a three-year-old could turn a stomach bug into a spectator sport.
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