vomit chronicles

This morning Rosie came into our room at 6:30.  “Dad,” she said, “What’s that orange liquid on my floor?”

It was pinkish, actually, I found when I went to her room.  It had to be vomit, mostly dried and crusting on the carpet fibers in front of her dresser.   She had eaten raspberries for dinner the night before.  She must have walked in her sleep, thrown up in her sleep, and gone back to bed.  She had no memory of it.

It’s been a pukey month for us. Rosie got this stomach bug a month ago, and conquered it - we thought - in 18 hours.  Then last Thursday, while I was solo parenting and Jack was at a conference in Tampa, Rosie came into my room at 1 am.  “My tummy really, really hurts,” she said, and promptly vomited all over my bed.

In between these two bouts of illness for Rosie, Owen, Jack and I all got it too.  Owen got it the day before our out of town friends were supposed to come visit.  They went to Chicago instead, and so the next day, when he was better, we drove up to hang out.  After three hours with them, I said, “I don’t feel right,” and proceeded to lose my lunch in the aquarium parking garage (sorry whoever had to clean that one up!), and then lost some more of it in an empty starbucks cup while driving 60 mph down the highway in Chicago with Owen asleep in the backseat. (If you ever need an excuse to order a grande instead of a tall, just think of me in this moment and how grateful I was for my earlier indulgence. It kept me clean.)

Danielle said that I should write about all this sickness, about my season of sicknesses. (Rosie and Owen both had a stomach bug at Christmas too, delaying our trip home in Rosie's case, and then crowning our Christmas Day celebration in Owen's case.)  

In another conversation, she said I write to make meaning out of events.  

I just can’t figure out what meaning I’m supposed to make out of all this vomit. 

At least it makes for sweet, cuddly kids.