Hey, all! It’s another Kindred Mom day! You can click over there to read the whole thing or keep reading for part of it.
As I rocked my toddler before bed, the thought came from nowhere: “You know, we haven’t had a stomach bug in a while…”
On its heels: “CRAP. That’s always what I think right before we get one.”
Like clockwork, the barfing begins the next morning (well, middle of the night). I almost laugh at my magical fortune-telling superpowers, but I can barely manage to run back and forth between the preschooler in the tub and the bedding. Good Lord, the bedding. What did she eat?!? I don’t remember having anything like that for dinner. And it’s all down the walls and the sides of the mattress and…
Sanitize cycle. We just, for the first time in fifteen years of marriage, got a brand-new washer and dryer. And it has an “oxi-sanitize” cycle in which I add Oxi-clean powder and some puke-laden towels, and it runs for two and a half hours and magically kills whatever caused my kid to expel the contents of her stomach.
I marvel at the timing, thankful (maybe more thankful than the situation warrants) that the bug waited until the week after the new washer and dryer were installed.
The next morning finds me still cleaning. My sorta-smart watch says I got three hours of sleep divided among five different stretches. I’m passing out Gladware™ square bowls that we use for this (and also for leftovers). The count is now three kids down, Daddy in bed dying (I don’t begrudge him this—I’m a bigger nausea/vomiting weenie than he is), one kid still apparently fine, and me.
I feel mildly queasy, and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been thinking about vomit all day (and have cleaned it out of my bra once already) or because I’m the next victim…
grace enough 