For those of you who find pleasure in the misfortunes of others, this posting is for you. For those of you that wonder if the sole point of this blog is to gross everyone out with stories about the unfortunate accidents of my children, let me assure you that is not the point; it just happens to be the dominate (and recurrent) theme in my life right now, and since I am sure that most people fall into the first category above, I relate to you my misfortunes, for your pleasure.
We have been inundated with company lately; we hosted my wife's family reunion last weekend here at the Foster Farmlet, and besides distant relatives, we have had many in-laws, their children, and applicable spouses along with them staying with us. Mercifully, many of them were able to stay with the in-laws across the road. It isn’t at all that I dislike any of them; it is just merely a matter of different schedules, and different priorities. The main problem has been that I am an early riser, and most of my in-laws are not. That, and it seems the primary objective is to try to successfully pull off what I call a “nap-chain”, which is where there is always someone trying to “catch a little nap” at all times during the day, so as to maintain at least one person sleeping at all hours of the day. All of which isn’t a big deal to me, albeit completely foreign, but makes it difficult to do anything when you are trying to be quiet and have to step over bodies all over your house. Kind of gives you that “Funeral-Home” feeling.
But anyway, one sister-in-law generously brought with her some kind of bug that rapidly attacks the intestines, and affects the both ends of its victim. This bug has torn through my family like so many children through strawberry wedding cake. So far, the current count is (just my own immediate family) 6 vomitings in 2 days, which is why I am at home posting blogs, instead of sitting at church right now. But the worst by anyone’s standards was last night after we put the kids to bed: Grace complained about not feeling very well after going to the big wedding yesterday morning, but reveled in how much punch and strawberry cake she got to eat. Not too surprising that she didn’t feel that well, huh? Well, she was the least of our worries as she has always done well at getting up and making it to the bathroom when she gets sick.
Just an hour after putting the kids to bed, we are all sitting around chatting, me being mostly quiet, as I don’t feel that well myself, when we hear a gagging sound, the tell-tale sound of a child vomiting. We instantly go to the boys’ room, and look around but can find no sign of any activity. We convince ourselves we must have misheard, and it was just a cough, but decided to check on the girls, just to be sure. I walked into their room, bent down to check Emma, found she was OK, then straightened up to check out Grace. Now, those of you who know me well will remember my less-than-impressive stature. The top of the top bunk bed is just about dead level with the bottom of my chin. When I look at Gracie, it sinks in that she is sleeping hard, but with a pool of vomit close to her head. I stare stupidly, trying to take it all in, as she rolls slightly, faces me, and vomits violently, directly in my face, without ever opening her eyes. As I am calmly deciding what I would rather more; getting a very pink coating of vomit or being gutted and dragged behind horses, she does it again. This finally jerks me out of my deep thoughts, and we whisk her off to the bath. Luckily for her, she remembers nothing of it, except a nice late-night bath, and a really aggressive tooth-brushing. Less luckily for me, I have the image of my head and front of my shirt being covered with recycled strawberry cake and punch burned into my memory and olfactory senses. My wife commented that least I took the brunt of it and we didn’t have to clean too much carpet. That’s me, Human Vomit Shield Man. Great! What a slogan: “Protecting carpets everywhere from vomiting children!! Up and away!!!!” That’s not nearly as glamorous as Haircut Harry, the Backwards Cape Boy. I ought to wear a full-body form fitting latex cape.
Oh, and by the way, just for the record, even though Grace actually threw up three times in her bed, I only counted it as once. There have been six completely separate and independent incidents. People keep asking me if what I write about is true, and all I can say is, after a certain point “you just can’t make this stuff up…” and since we are on the “gross-out theme;” if the Ropers will write up their vomit story (just about the only story that I can imagine that would out-do mine) I will post that, too.
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