It Was A Total Barf-A-Rama

This is dedicated to Joey, who always makes me laugh.

We learned not to let my brother and his family "rub on us for good luck" the hard way. We had a nice big birthday party for Nathan Labor Day weekend and my brother and his family were able to make it. As they were leaving, they told us they had been through a pretty bad week and really needed to rub on us for some good luck. They had dented up their new car and their baby had brought a nasty stomach virus home from daycare and shared it with them. The baby handled it pretty well, but his mommy and daddy said they could barely function enough to care for him. We said our goodbyes with hugs and kisses along with hugs and kisses to my parents who had spent the night at their house prior to coming to the party and didn't think about that conversation again until....
Labor Day was our last day in San Antonio. As we did every morning, we woke up to a huge breakfast prepared by my father-in-law. Eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, juice, fried rice. Yummy and too much as always. We then proceded to my brother-in-law's house to visit and of course to the next meal. Dim sum at a new restaurant they were excited to try. It was okay, but of course we ate too much. Even Nathan, who eats only to sustain himself, had several servings of fried rice after asking for more and saying he was hungry. (Very unusual behavior for him). From there we went to the airport and were escorted by almost our entire family. Pretty comical site I imagine. I won't always have to imagine it because true to form, my father-in-law videotaped the whole thing. We didn't eat much on the plane. Then we got home (by home I mean Michigan, since "home" is currently a hotel) and asked Nathan what he wanted for dinner. He gave the standard "McDonalds" answer and we obliged. After checking into the hotel we started eating our dinner in the first room we were given (hadn't been cleaned so we figured we'd be moving, but we were hungry) and then we finished up our meal in the new room which was hot and stuffy. No one had exactly the same thing except for French fries, by the way, and Hannah, of course, had none of it. We got into bed. Nathan was unhappy about being all in the same room which is ironic since we slept that way at our house in Texas. He was being difficult, but I could barely keep my eyes open. We were all pretty sleep deprived and since Hannah was sleeping I decided to stop watching the Florida State/Miami game and go to sleep. Nathan kept saying his tummy was hurting, but he says that sometimes when he needs to poop so I didn't worry too much. I heard snippets of conversations between Joey and Nathan as I drifted off and I knew he was getting a pull-up to poop in (yes, he's still doing that). I heard him say he needed to throw up and then I heard him do that. (Bad Mommy, I just stayed in bed. Joey was handling it beautifully). He cleaned him up and changed his jammies and that is last I heard of it until about 5:30am. I had been up with Hannah who was wiggling and fussing all over the place for about an hour before that and I heard Nathan whimpering and I just had a feeling he was about to throw up. I said, "Joey, he's..." That's all I got out and then I grabbed Hannah and moved her out of the splash zone. Joey got up. Cleaned up Nathan, changed his jammies again. Thankfully Hannah slept through this episode so I sat in the recliner holding her and Nathan after he was cleaned up. Joey got the sheets changed and everything cleaned up and we all climbed back in bed. At this time we were noticing that we didn't feel all that great either. We were quick to blame McDonalds because it is just such a likely culprit, but then we decided that was too soon so we moved on to blame the Chinese food restaurant (especially since that is what Joey claims Nathan was throwing up everywhere--I'll take his word for it).
When we all finally got up for the day, we all felt pretty gross. I was so thankful to Joey for handling the vomit. As a nurse and a mom I think I have handled more than my share of vomit. While working I am paid to make people feel like when I get puked on it is just an everyday, normal occurence. As a mom, I feel that same obligation, but let's face it, no one really wants to clean up someone else's puke. Or their own, for that matter. (I did my share of that in college). So I was feeling pretty proud of my wonderful husband for not being a huge baby and calling me to handle Nathan's barf and I told him so. He said, "What did you expect? Me to throw up everywhere too?" (Actually, I kinda did). He said his brother told him that one time our nephew threw up and he was cleaning it up and it was so gross it made him throw up too. He said, "It was a Barf-A-Rama!" I have to admit after typing this all out I don't know if it is as funny as it was at the time. We were pretty sleep deprived and feeling quite yucky. But we quoted a few lines from Stand By Me and laughed away the yuckiness. It feels good to laugh.