Oh What a Night

Robert teaches a night class on Wednesdays. Somehow everyone- my kids, the universe- seems to know this, and to act accordingly. The last time Liel had a stomach bug it started on a Wednesday night. Now admittedly this was some time ago, but it's still etched clearly in my mind: me leaning over to put her in her crib, then freezing as she started retching. Quick! Get her over the floor, not the crib! She puked all over the floor, both of us, Fluffy, you name it. And I had Zion waiting in his room for pajamas, a drink, and a tuck in. And Liel was up like 5 times throwing up before Robert even made it home.

So by way of comparison, tonight was pretty lightweight stuff. Still, some days are Wednesdays, and some aren't. And today definitely was.

Zion didn't eat much lunch after school, but he told me that Gail (one of his teachers) had surprised them with little pies, so I figured he'd had a lot of snack and wasn't hungry. He conked right out at nap time, which was a relief since he didn't nap either of the past two days. Sadly, the unwritten rule in our house is that if one child takes a good nap the other will take a very short and insufficient nap, or no nap at all. As a result, I was busy with Liel much sooner than usual. Aside from that we had a normal afternoon of play, stories, and granola making. Zion kept asking when Robert would be home, and disliking my reply (not for a while, after you're asleep) he'd say, "Well, I think Daddy's going to have to be in trouble!" He was also very interested in pretending to be a sick corgi, and having Liel be the doctor who would treat him.

Zion asked about Robert again right before dinner, and when I told him Daddy wouldn't be home for dinner tonight he announced that he didn't want any dinner. At this point I started to add it all up and wonder if Zion was perhaps not feeling well. I sat the kids down at the table and headed into the living room in search of Liel's water. Oh snap! Guess what I saw??

Puke. On my new rug. I almost cried. Zion had thrown up about half an hour previously when Liel and I were in my bedroom and not told me about it. Of course I was sad that he wasn't feeling good, but....my rug!! So I set to work to clean up the vomit, blot as much wetness as I could, scrub and press and try to restore the original colors. I was having reasonable success at this when Liel announced that she was done eating and wanted to get out of her chair. "Alright", I told her. "Just let me put these in the laundry basket". And I headed to my room with a stack of cloth diapers I'd used on the rug (cloth diapers- is there anything they can't do??). CRASH! HOWL! I ran into the dining room and found Liel and her chair tipped over on the wood floor. Thankfully she was fine- banged a little, and scared, but not seriously hurt.

I gave up on eating my own dinner until after the kids were asleep. Wednesday and all.