Then we got home.
Mom and Dad filled us in on the goings on of the day while Aaron showed off the airplane that he and “Pack” had put together, and Elyse snoozed peacefully in her room. Minutes later though, we heard her start to stir and we went in to get our precious baby girl whom we had missed so much; at least we had missed her right up until we caught our first glimpse of her post-nap. She was covered in vomit. Head to toe, all of the blankets, everything was coated in a layer of slime.
I could tell that this wasn’t just the result of something that didn’t sit quite well from lunch, but that she was truly sick because her little eyes had huge bags under them and she just stared out into space while I attempted to give her a bath without ever taking a breath as the room and the girl reeked of the most sour evil ever expelled from a child. She got sick only one more time before she went to bed for the night, but slept peacefully and made a full recovery by morning. Sunday was uneventful and we went to bed hopeful that whatever Elyse had, stayed with her and that she hadn’t contaminated anyone else in the family.
12:30 AM we realized that we were stupid for ever thinking that the cooties had been contained when we heard Aaron running for the bathroom and not in a, “Boy do I have to pee” kind of way. The poor kid managed to make it in time and kept himself completely clean in the process. Pretty impressive for a five year old I thought. He wasn’t even worked up about it either. He just got a drink of water and headed back to bed like nothing had happened.
At 2:30 AM he wasn’t so lucky and neither were his pajamas, sheets, or doggie. Even with all of that he wasn’t really upset and he just asked if he could sit with me on the couch for a little while. What a champ. I would have been begging the Lord for mercy and to please make it stop, but all he wanted was a little Sprite and an episode of Little Bear. So at 3:00 AM I was watching Little Bear and doing vomit laundry which is a complete 180 from the peaceful sleep that I was getting seven years ago on the night before our wedding day. Ahh, the magic of motherhood.
We danced the delicate dance of the heaving child one more time before 3:45 AM and then he went back to bed; fresh bedding, doggie, and all. I starred at the TV while Molly Ringwald sat in detention with a bunch of other misfits until just after 4:00 AM and then tried to drift off to sleep…until 4:15 AM when Aaron’s stomach decided to do one final check to see that all of the passengers had de-boarded and that all trays were locked and in their upright position. After that, he slept and I passed out.
So Monday rolled around and I was exhausted and a little uneasy in the stomach, but I hoped that it was just the lack of sleep and the fact that I had been cleaning up vomit for the last day and a half. As the day wore on though it was clear that I wasn’t just tired, but that I too had been contaminated. I don’t think that we even ate dinner that night and by the time the kids went to bed both Mike and I were too tired to even watch our wedding video. We spent the remainder of our anniversary slipping in and out of consciousness while attempting to watch a little TV before bed.
That night and for the next FIVE days my insides declared war on the rest of my body and I spent most of my time either curled up in the fetal position on the couch praying for death or walking hunched over tending to the children struggling to find the will to go on. It was a magical time, but somehow by the grace of God, when I woke up this morning I felt human again. I have successfully gotten both breakfast and lunch down and I still feel ok. Everyone else seems to be recovered and feeling great which was just in time for the biggest blizzard to hit our area since 2003 which incidentally happened just two weeks after Mike and I had gotten married. Crazy how things happen like that, huh?
So we are all trapped here in the house praying that the electric doesn’t go out and trying not to kill each other in the process. I am trying to catch up on the mountains of laundry that I neglected all week long while my stomach was trying to recreate a scene from the movie Alien and Mike is outside fighting a losing battle against the still falling snow. We are all warm and cozy and NOT covered in vomit which is quite a refreshing change of pace.
1 comments:
I am sorry your family was so sick. We had this junk for ever it seemed. IT kept making its journey through us all and back again. I lysoled and bleached everything....
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