Catch-Puke

Children vomiting sucks, and I hate it. There’s no getting around the dreaded stomach bug when you’re a mom, but there’s also no use pretending it’s not basically the worst thing ever.

That being said, I thought I had reached the apex of upchuck trials when Charlotte, at the age of 18 months, became convinced that the trash can and toilet made her puke, and subsequently puked everywhere but there. This continued well into her third year, and happened to coincide with the most stomach-bug-happy period of our lives. In fact, we’ve only had one stomach bug since she became semi-rational and willing to throw up in a receptacle instead of on my shoulder,

But then Lincoln got sick. Sick enough to throw up absolutely everything for the last 24 hours, yet not sick enough to stop running around with his adorable tiny dancing-run. So I’ve developed a new event in the parenting Olympics. Like a hideous inverse of dodgeball, this one is called catch-puke.  Here’s how it works:

• You medal by default if you stick out the whole stomach bug without calling your husband and running past him out the front door as soon as he gets home.
• You get a silver medal if you manage to contain even one round of upchucking without subsequently upchucking yourself.
• You get a gold if you’re smart enough to lay towels down on the crib and/or bed instead of changing the sheets three times in the wee sma’s, and if you manage to catch enough puke to require using only half a can of carpet cleaner.

But you win all the medals if your love of your miserable child overcomes your aversion to regurgitated toddler food so that when they lift their chubby arms for you to pick them up mid-vomit, with tears in those little eyes,  you scoop them up without thinking and get puked on. Repeatedly.

*Be advised that I put that last one in because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten any medals in my own stupid event. But since I created it, I can rig it however I want. So there.

Lest you think I’m joking about him puking incessantly yet cheerfully, here’s a video of him singing “Let it Go” 2.5 seconds before heaving all over the breakfast table.

**Oh yes, apologies for my tone-deafness. It’s just a thing with me, along with being unable to park and getting irrationally angry about the slow death of the Oxford comma.