Life with Kids

One of my sons had been sick over the weekend. Actually he vomited once on Sunday morning and seemed fine after that. Thankfully my wonderful husband is the official vomit cleaner in our house so I offered a “thank you” to him and extra hugs to my boy and that was that.

Fast forward to this morning.

Tuesday mornings I typically go to a mom’s Bible study at my church. Since the boys were both feeling well we decided to go. I hadn’t slept well so I decided to stop and get a coffee on the way, always a great idea. My son wanted a chocolate milk and since he hadn’t eaten much of his breakfast I thought the milk was a good idea. My son is almost 3 and really misses dairy. We were all on a high dairy diet until last fall. He laments regularly, “I want yellow cheese”, “I want yogurt”, “I want milk”, and the like. My husband and I have decided that we are comfortable giving him dairy occasionally.

We pulled away from Starbucks about 8:30 and got on the highway. I’m enjoying my coffee and encouraging my son to drink his chocolate milk, after all we will be at church soon. I merge onto the highway when I hear that now familiar noise of a kid getting ready to barf. 

My son is great with directions and notices we are no longer going to church. I explain to him that when you vomit you can’t go to church. I told him we would go home and play with stickers (I’d been saving them for a rainy day) and watch movies.

Everyone knows that barf is like magic! Even if you only eat or drink a very small amount it will multiply exponentially on it’s way up. My son’s car seat has a 5 point harness, that is a lot of little nooks and crannies for the vomit to flow, and flow it did. Thankfully it looked like all of the vomit was confined to my son’s lap/car seat. We drive home and pull into the garage I unbuckle his car seat, have him stand up, remove his clothes that are COVERED in vomit and tell him to go in and wash his hands while I remove the car seat from the van. I unlatch the seat and pick it up to discover the flow seeped through his car seat onto the van seat, which is normally covered with an old towel just in case but was not today. Sigh.

I take the car seat which we affectionately call “Behemoth” inside only to find my son who is only in his diaper running around with a tennis racket that he lifted from the garage. I was my hands, send my son to wash his hands, then take the tennis racket back to the garage. As I put it away I find a booby trap my son left for me as he was getting the tennis racket and paint cans fall and roll under the van. I did not retrieve them.

Oh yes, I have another son still in the van. I grab him take him in the house then toss the pukey clothes in the washing machine. Oh, now we have two dirty diapers to deal with, I take care of those bring out the stickers and it’s time for the baby’s nap.

Back to the vomit. I clear off the counter next to the sink because the car seat is huge and I don’t want any cross contamination. Also the car seat cover is NOT washing machine safe so I get to scrubbing. I scrubbed down all of the padding and then the straps and buckles. I carry them across the room to put them outside to dry only to realize I dripped a river across the room. I clean than up then get to scrubbing the uncovered car seat, top and bottom. This covers the counter in water which drips down to the tile. The grout between the tiles facilitates new rivers running in all directions. The seat is finally clean so I carry it out side as well. Now it is time to clean up all of the water in the floor. 

My son is bored with stickers so I get out stamps then head to the garage to clean out the van. That job goes quick which is good because I’m a little concerned about my son being unsupervised with stamps. I go in and check on him only to discover that the stamp pad is dried out. Yea! No mess!

Now it’s 10:00 and relatively uneventful. Time to drink my coffee.

This post is dedicated to my friend Amanda. Read about her adventures at http://spilledmilkandwetkisses.blogspot.com/