last week, Zoe awoke with a grumpy raincloud over her head.
she drug herself down the hallway, moaning and groaning, “my tummy hurts.”

this is Zoe’s usual routine when she doesn’t want to do something.
I told her to stop whining and get dressed.

she managed to slither her way to the couch where she stared into space for a few minutes, until I finally(raising my voice this time)said, “ZOE! go get dressed, now!”

no sooner did those words escape my mouth, when suddenly she began to spew like ‘old faithful’.
I jumped up as fast as I could and grabbed the nearest towel from the basket of laundry to fold. she proceeded to un-clean the towel, in fact, almost completely soaking the thing.

over the next 2 hours, she continued with this spew-fest and could not keep down the soda crackers she took a few nibbles of. she spent all of the morning with a big barf bowl on her lap and napped about half the day away. by about 5 o’clock in the evening, she shot up from the couch, raring to go.

It must have been one of those 12 hour bugs or something. I spent the weekend just praying that neither of the boys would end up with it.

I’ll never forget the barf-a-palooza we had when Zander was about a year old. all three of the kids had diarrhea and were throwing up ALL OVER the living room. just when we finished cleaning up after one child, another would go off like a little sick-bomb. I remember crying, down on my hands and knees thinking to myself, “it can NEVER get any worse than THIS!”

and I was right. it hasn’t. not yet, anyway!

I think if you can survive three sick kids at once, you can pretty much survive anything.
well,…we’ll see.
just don’t be shocked when you see the newspaper clipping of my chalk outline in a huge pool of something indistinguishable.