Did the first week back make you sick?

It did us. Or specifically Rachel, who started throwing up around 7pm Thursday evening and didn't stop until 2am Friday morning.

Luckily the fates were in our favor to make a yucky (and I do mean GROSS) situation better, at least. Mike experienced a rare snow day Thursday AND Friday. The Friday one came none too soon. Just as we were starting to turn on each other in the, can you stay with her tomorrow? No I really can't but I will if you can't, debated, Libby our sitter texted us that school was off Friday too. She is an avid watcher of such reports.

So Daddy volunteered for night time, snuggling her on the couch duty. We didn't want to put her back in the crib again and change the sheets all night as we had already done it twice before we wised up and kept her with us and out of bed.

We think it was just a stomach bug. She was fine by morning. Nursed along by sippy cuts of watered down Orange Gatorade and a LOT of Daddy love. He really earned some sort of hall of famer badge.

I too earned a badge though maybe a bit sad but equally impressive for the ultimate career/family juggling: finishing up a powerpoint for work, while intermittently jumping up to hold her bowl and brush her hair back.

Add in the fact that it panicks me a bit in general because it's unfamiliar to us. Matthew's only gotten really sick once (on vacation, and it was a stomach flu that had ripped through the condo). Rachel just once did one of those quick ones, "whoops I ate too much BLAHHH" but not due to illness.

So here this tiny tiny girl who can't even talk, steadily removing fluids from her body for 7 hours, and even though I know from good counsel that can go on up to 12 hours before we need to start to worry. But you still worry. And then, it's just so sad.

It must be such a exhausting and frustrating experience for a toddler: having bad tasting stuff come out of your mouth repeatedly, your tummy hurts and churns, you don't even have the benefit to know why it's happening, and you feel sooo tired and worn out by the time it's midnight, and it's not stopping, that you just tip your head right on over your Daddy's arm, into your own puke bowl.

Now she is running around, seemingly rejuvenated (certainly LOUD :), with that energy you get back when your stomach flu mysteriously disappears as mysteriously and quickly as it hit you upside your little gut. So it's over! Crisis, extended flu and even doctor visit, averted.

But boy, does our front room still smell like vomit.