The Puke Fountain

June 13, 2009:

Yesterday we headed back home after a week away. All in all, I’m happy to be home and back in my own bed which I’ve come to realize I am VERY attached to. I’m happy to be back where there is an enormous yard full of dirt patches and swing sets on a quiet, dead-end road. And I’ve completely repented of ever thinking I could live in a city for any length of time with these kids! How do people do it?! Give me the country, where my kids can run around outside while the screen door stays propped open and they can come in and go out as they please while I fix dinner.

During that week I had one kid after another come down with a quick, somewhat violent, attack of a 24-hr. bug. First was the little one, waking up in the night with that unmistakable sound coming from her bed just before the inevitable pick-me-up-NOW-mommy-I-don’t-feel-good! cry. She had a fever of 103.1. I went downstairs with her, gave her some tylenol and rocked her while I waited to see if she could hold down a bit of water. 45 min. later we headed back up the stairs and she slept in bed with us, kicking and squirming while I snoozed without moving until my arm cramped up! Aside from a little tiredness, she was fine the next day.

Next one to come down with it was Emmy. She threw up once two days after Elayna’s bout with it, and spent the rest of the day on the bed watching movies. Later that afternoon we packed up the car to drive home. Josh was complaining of a headache, but I hoped we’d make it home before he really came down with it. Yeah, not so much.

He made it about an hour up the road before he said he needed a bathroom. When we pulled of the road at a truck stop, he barely made it out the door before puking on the concrete next to the car. He retched several times and then said, “okay, I need to go potty now.” So I did what any reasonable mother would do and turned him toward the tire and said, “okay, son, here you go.” I grabbed his little sister’s blanket from the back seat and gave him a little curtain while he peed. Then I made him leave his rain boots (thank goodness he was wearing THOSE!) on the ground and climb back into his seat. Poor kid.

It reminded me of the time we were driving him home from the hospital after his surgery and he needed a bathroom. There was no way in this world I was going to take him into a public restroom three days after he had heart surgery. The GERMS!! The HORROR!! So we pulled over to the side of the freeway and he peed right off the running board into the grass. Call me crazy, but a public restroom just wasn’t an option right then. And yes, he uses them now just fine. I’m not that paranoid anymore!

So back to the more recent trip, I hoped that Josh would be done being sick after that, since both of his sisters had just had the one bout and no more. But no such luck. He threw up several times more, making excellent use of the collapsible, water-proof, traveling dog dish that we use to give our little hotdog a drink of water on road trips. He was so responsible, hardly even making a sound, just resolvedly doing what needed to be done, even though he felt puny. After one time, when we were stopped on the side of the road emptying and rinsing the makeshift puke bowl, he looked up at me with a little impish grin and said, “Hey, that was a big puke fountain, wasn’t it?!”

We just had to laugh at that one.