Nothing says "Home Sweet Home" like Vomit

Ah yes.

I'm not sure why, but I had set my hopes high.

Higher than this at least.
Hoping that the vomit beast.

Would stay at bay.
Longer than just a day.

In honesty it was more than a day,
but why not a whole week?

More than a week,
before our new house would reek.

Of vomit.

I guess the toilets, floors, and beds did need
to be christened at some point indeed,
but so soon?

Good thing the thermometers were unpacked.
So many reasons to feel out of whack.

Still managing to find humor and rhyme...
hoping we're all better in no time!

Calgon, I may just take you up on that.

So. Hello there.

You know it is bad when your mother phones you to make sure you are okay...because you haven't updated your blog recently.

It has been crazy for the past week. The girls night out was great. I seriously laughed until I cried. My nose even ran. And I didn't have a tissue. If Lily had been with me, I would have wiped it on her shirt...you know...just to repay the favor.

That night was my last good memory and it was a week ago. Sigh.

I plan on keeping this brief, but the majority of our issues have been stomach virus related. Lily never got it, Jerry and I had it briefly, but Jade. Poor Jade. Late last week you could not only hear her little bottom exploding from across the room, but smell it too. My, oh my. Thankfully she is better now.

There were intermittent episodes of vomit as well. The kind that make you just want to throw out your carpet all together. Thankfully between Resolve and countless hours on our hands and knees scrubbing, the sights and smells are starting to fade around here.

My dear mother could sense my stress over vomit rugs and offered to get them cleaned for us. I think that is a mother-daughter love language thing right there. I owe you mom.

Add some bad mommy days, winter blues, and a few other things and I just haven't been fun to be around.

And somehow in the midst of all this my Google, FireFox, and Blogger pages are all in French at the moment. I don't have a freaking clue. I just hope I hit the right button to get this thing published. My minor in Spanish is helping me a little...but I just knew French would have come in handier though...just knew it.

So, pretending that Jerry has absolutely nothing going on at work, I called him and had a full on meltdown today. The kind that left him scared to hang up too quickly. Poor guy. He got to hear all about how Jade had only napped for two 25 minute intervals and how I had played princess, painted, cut and glued with Lily til I was just about worn out. And how I entertained a neighbor girl this morning and how the milk spilled and how they tracked it through the house, and how Jade slid and busted her head and how Lily wasn't obeying well...and how all of that happened in a matter of minutes.

I felt much better after hanging up.

When he got home he reassured me that these are trying days and how completely normal it is to feel overwhelmed at times. Then he reminded me of these commercials...which I actually don't remember seeing back in the day. Sure, I get the jokes about them, but somehow seeing them is just so much better.

There are multiple versions...all of which we just watched and laughed about.


Do they still make this stuff? I'm thinking my tub could hold quite a bit of it.

I think I may need to get a deadbolt for the bathroom door.

A time-line of my day. Just the highlights prior to 7AM.

The first two hours of my Friday morning:

5:03 woke up. still on couch. realized that i must have fallen asleep 2.3 seconds into grey's anatomy. what is up with that show this year? totally disappointing.

5:31 crawled in bed and heard jade stirring. shoot. did i wake her as i came up the stairs?

5:52 just fell back asleep. wah...wah...wah...came from jade's monitor. ignored it and turned over.

6:03 unable to ignore the cries any longer.

6:05 opened her door. greeted by vomit smell. again. remember?

6:05:01 i realized that jerry did not go to workout this morning. lucky him.

6:05:02 woke jerry up. because i'm rude like that.

6:06 removed vomit clothing from baby while jerry went about changing her bedding.

6:12 tossed jade in the tub for a good scrub down. enjoyed combing food chunks out of her hair the most.

6:20 dressed and lotioned up jade. started to realize she is wanting milk and she only needs pedialyte, which i don't normally stock.

6:22 mentioned to jerry that jade really needs some pedialyte and that we don't have any.

6:22:01 blank stare.

6:23 mentioned to jerry that i really couldn't give jade any milk...what she really needs is pedialyte.

6:23:01 blank stare.

6:24 i guess one of us really needs to go get some pedialyte.

6:24:01 j-yes, kerry, you've mentioned that a few times now. but i've got to leave for work in 20 minutes. (isn't it so annoying that boys can go from boxers to dressed w/a tie in 20 minutes)

6:25 k-so how am i going to get the pedialyte?

6:25:01 j-load jade up and take her with you, i'll listen for lily while i shower.

6:26 k-oh, yeah. that makes sense i guess. (envisioning jade vomiting all over car) but walgreen's isn't open yet(1 mile from home).

6:26:01 j-yeah, but kroger's is (3 miles from home).

6:27 as we were leaving jade spotted a sippy cup on the counter. the wailing ensued. that girl has to have her milk w/in a minute of waking up. i can't even change her diaper first.

6:28 the cold air hit her face and the wailing stopped. praise God.

6:28:01 i realized that jerry's idea of cleaning up the vomit sheets was to throw them on the front porch...as i tripped over them on my way to the car.

6:29 got jade buckled in. the wailing started again. what? realized she spotted another sippy cup in the car. she. cried. every. second. of. our. drive. not like a whimpering wah, wah, cry. it was the full on I AM TOTALLY ANGRY THAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN TO GIVE ME MY MILK WOMAN cry.

6:35 arrived at kroger with crying baby on hip. brought sippy cup from car with me.

6:36 passed by Starbucks kiosk and thought about shouting out my order over jade's screams. resisted.

6:37 ignored comments from the lone cashier woman..."baby must not do mornings, ha, ha"...so not funny.

6:39 busted open the pedialyte right there on aisle 6 and filled jade's cup w/just a couple of ounces.

6:42 picked up a few other essentials for our home-bound-vomit-ridden day. mainly strong coffee.

6:45 proceeded to self checkout supervised by said lone cashier. (are y'all familiar w/those things...where you scan your own groceries? i have fits with them during waking hours...much less at this point in my day. clearly not designed w/a mother in mind...one whose children like to sit down in the bag area..."new item in bag area...not scanned...please scan new item" ugh.)

6:46 scanned my items one by one. all was going well. then the register stopped and some big error message filled the screen letting me know that i needed supervisor assistance. oh, geez, not from her.

6:49 we finally realized that the smarty pants register's scale has noted 2 ounces missing from the pedialyte. NO JOKE.

6:50 she exerted her will over the too-smart-for-its-own-good register and i was allowed to proceed.

6:51 i grabbed jade and the groceries and was happy to be heading home.

6:52 the cashier decides to engage me in conversation. it went kind of like this:

cashier: that pedialyte is good stuff.

me: yep, it does the trick.

c: you know, we use it for our lizards.

m: lizards? like you give it to them to drink? (heading for the exit)

c: well, yeah. sometimes we just let them soak in it. you know, when we see that they are looking dehydrated.

m: (trying to think of a time when she saw a lizard that didn't look dehydrated) oh, wow. (still heading for exit)

c: sometimes we just spray it on them with a mister. (not getting the hint that i'm more than ready to leave)

m: oh, i bet that works well. (feeling a little explosion in jade's diaper)

c: yeah, well the vets charge so much to see lizards and diagnose them. (totally clueless of my situation) like $50 or $60 a visit.

m: (totally smelling jade's deposit) wow, that is a lot. (making a bee line for the exit and not looking back) good luck with all that!

6:58 i was back in the car and headed home. trying to think about how excited jerry would be when I told him that he would now be running late for work because apparently i needed a good education on the methods of treating dehydration in lizards.

The aroma is a mixed bouquet...including sour milk vomit, grape flavored zyrtec, fresh coffee and a hint of burnt scrambled eggs

Jade has not been feeling well. In the middle of the night, Jerry went to her aide with Tylenol for a sudden fever. When it was all said and done he ended up letting her cry herself back to sleep, which thankfully didn't take very long.

This morning when I opened her door, with bottle in hand, I was taken over with the smell of baby vomit. And then I caught sight of her. It was obviously not fresh. It was not only caked on her bedding, but on her face and hair as well. Remnants of a barely distinguishable black bean and a carrot were matted into her blond curls. I guess she had thrown up as she cried herself to sleep. Poor thing...I'm trying no the let the mommy guilt set in.

My first instinct was to put her straight in the bath. But she had already seen the bottle, so she one the argument. 7 ounces later, I thought she felt warm, so we took a quick detour down to the kitchen for some Tylenol.

When the coughing started, I knew it wasn't a good sign. The vomiting began. How does milk curdle so quickly? I was just thankful it was on the tile floor since it had a tinge of red Tylenol to it.

In case you are wondering what sort of volume her projectile produced, Lily put it into words quite nicely. "Wow, Mom, Jade threw up all over. There is no space to walk in the kitchen now."

Not only that, but Jade and I were both covered too. I decided to head up to the bath and in very few words made sure that Lily knew to stay out of the kitchen.

We stripped down and I quickly got myself washed and redressed. Then I went to work on getting the dried food out of her hair. Two shampoos and several combings later, she was clean and smelled like a Gerber baby.

Now the bed. I scraped up as much as I could and rolled up the sheets and blankets and tossed them on the bathroom floor in the pile with our vomit laden clothes.

After a quick call to my mom, I was reminded not to feed her anything else. She doesn't quite realize the force that Jade is to be reckoned with when it comes to eating. After all, the high chair is her happy place. And that is just where she went so I could start to work on the kitchen floor.

I did a hands and knees job on the floor because I can't stand the thought of vomit being on my mop head.

Clean baby, clean momma, clean floor and isolated vomit laundry. The day was looking brighter.

I started the coffee and threw some eggs in the skillet. I decided to attempt the Tylenol again and lay Jade down for her morning nap.

Somehow, while making some toast for Lily, my elbow brushed the Zyrtec bottle and it went crashing to the floor. Ugh. The aroma of vomit was still hinted in the air...and now the smell of sweet grape Zyrtec? Yuck. Along with the eggs and coffee...it was just too much.

Thankfully at least I was able to use my mop after wiping up the sticky syrup and glass pieces.

But, what's that I hear? Jade. Crying. The smash of the glass on the floor must have woken her up. And I dare not let her cry it out and start this whole process of vomit removal over again.

So I go up to try to get her back to sleep. Mission accomplished.

I head back down the stairs and a new fragrance greets my nose. The eggs. THE EGGS! I forgot about the eggs. Burnt eggs now.

And what do I find on my kitchen floor this time?

In the few minutes I was up calming Jade, Lily decided to take a "craft" upon herself. It involved rolling out an entire roll of aluminum foil and emptying a new box of gallon size ziplocs. And of course...glue.

I glanced up at the clock hoping for it to reveal 7PM bedtime, but it stared back at me with a rude 9:49 AM.

So I cleaned up Lily's "craft", cancelled our morning playdate, opened up the windows, and thanked the Lord for seasonal allergies.

I can't imagine smelling all of this at 100% nasal capacity.

Oooops. Yesss! Nooo! Ewww!

Those four words pretty much sum up our last 24 hours.

Oooops.

The DryPro Cast Protector that we were so excited about a few weeks ago, failed us. We had only used it once for a fun water park trip during Big Girl Weekend. It had served us more for keeping Lily's cast dry during baths. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but when your little girl's other name is Ariel, it is. When acting out various scenes from The Little Mermaid can occupy hours of your child's time, those hours being cut in half due to water scenes being eliminated can take its toll on the family. Lily needed her stage back. The bathtub is her stage.

So, late Sunday, The Little Mermaid Act 7 was taking place in the master tub. Somehow, even after multiple successes with the DryPro cover, a leak occurred. Jerry comes down the stairs telling me that we have a problem. A dripping wet cast kind of problem.

Ooops.

The doc on call actually offered to meet me at the ER to recast it. I immediately felt awful about the overwhitened teeth comment I had made earlier. He earned every penny for those snow white teeth...even on Sunday night at the ER apparently. I was shocked over what a big deal it really was. Then, realizing that an entire company makes their living by selling waterproof cast covers...it made sense. Duh...you really aren't supposed to get these things wet.

We decided to forgo the ER trip and went the hairdryer route instead. The doc mentioned it would take 4-6 hours of the hairdryer on cool to get the thing dried out. Well, Lily lasted a whopping 45 minutes...that being at 3 different 15 minute intervals. I was suffering too. Boy that cast started to reek as soon as it got wet. Spreading the foul smell all over the house with the hair dryer was a little much for me.

So an appointment was made the next day to get the wet cast situation checked out. My mind was starting to see mold growing on her skin, so if nothing else I wanted the doctor's reassurance that it was actually dry and not in growing mode.

Yesss!

Indeed the cast was dry enough to stay on. But, the doctor said since it had been on for 3 weeks already and it was such a minor fracture, the cast could probably just come off for good. Yesss!

So, the cast came off! Yipeee!

This is Lily remembering what her arm looked like.

It was actually pretty dirty. I cleaned it up good and then they took the final x-rays.

Nooo!

The doc seemed concerned after looking at the films and decided to examine her arm again. She was still having some acute pain at the wound site. Then he mentioned that if it had broken just 2mm further it would have been a surgery case. A few minutes earlier he was talking about the minor fracture. His teeth were looking whiter by the minute.

He recommended the cast going back on, not for just another week, but TWO. Nooo!

So, we got a brand new, shiny, clean cast. Did she chose another color? Purple maybe? No...we are still seeing fluorescent pink around here. The best part though was that it didn't smell...yet.

Ewww!

Within minutes of getting home, Lily wasn't feeling real well. She was laying on the couch and then I heard her coughing. Yep, you guessed it. Not only did she barf all over the couch, pillow and floor, but all over her new cast. Oh, the smell. Ewww!

Poor thing. I felt like vomiting too after all of the excitement and then huge let down. But that would have made for a double ewww, so I refrained.

What words are describing your week?