Barf-o-rama, Act III

More of the same here, I'm afraid. Monday was a relatively calm day, spent recuperating from the day before. We went to Target so David and Brian could blow the rest of their money (I really don't know where these kids get the stuff; I mean, I don't give it to them - could they be dealing drugs?) on a remote control airplane. Then I went to the dentist and (to make up for my trauma) a yarn shop, a type of establishment I had never been to before. I needed to go there to get a certain size knitting needle not carried in a generic crafts store like Michael's, and I have to admit I was curious about what I was missing in terms of the specialty yarn shop experience. But I ended up being disappointed. There were a lot of uber-price-y fistfuls of wool and everything (luckily) was a bit too refined (and expensive) to even tempt my appetite. I guess I'm just a cheap-eats sort of knitter. And I'm okay with that.

Okay, so we ate dinner, tucked the kids in bed, and had pretty much settled down for the evening when David came running down to tell me (not Larry; Larry had already gone to the sleep, the sneak) that Brian had thrown up. And in a valiant effort not to soil his bed linens, he had leaned over the bed rail - of the top bunk. It was a bad scene. The blast radius of this stuff was incredible. Maybe it had something to do with the ceiling fan, I'm not sure. But somehow it landed under the bed. And on the walls. And on the dresser. And the nightstand. And we still had to strip the beds (both of them). Under the bed was the biggest challenge - I don't think I've ever tried Swiffering vomit before, but it worked. I love my Swiffer.

The rest of the night is sort of a blur. There was more vomit and then I couldn't go to bed because I felt sick again (no wonder - our entire upstairs smelled disgusting by this point); I think I must have logged 3 hours total of sleep. Larry didn't do much better. But hey - who cares? Anna needed to go to Michael's today to get some beads for the bracelets she's making to sell at the holiday bazaar. Here there were sick people lying in various states of discomfort all over the living room (Theo had been felled by the stomach-virus fairy also); Susie for some reason decided to sympathy-vomit in the kitchen after I fed her some lunch; David was weak from hunger because he didn't want to eat because he figured he was going to get sick any minute (we're still waiting); but Anna could not comprehend why I was not grabbing my keys and running for the car. She also couldn't understand why a lot of the chores were falling on her. Not exactly a team-player, that girl. I was tired enough to ignore her histrionics, an approach which worked pretty well.

So there we are - for those of you keeping score, that's 5 down and 3 to go. And tomorrow's Larry's b'day.....so my money is on him.

Vomit Makes Me Want to Puke

Oh, dear, 2 days have gone by already? You know, time just flies when people are throwing up. Don't you think so? Actually, we had a vomit-free day Saturday, on which I ran around like mad and got all my errands done, because I knew that it was merely a brief hiatus and that the stomach-virus fairy was coming back. But she waited....so we went ahead with our plans to pack a fun picnic lunch and drive the 4 youngest to the great science museum in a city about an hour from here. We loaded everyone in the car and headed off and had a fairly uneventful car ride. Because Susie waited until we got all the way there, until we were pulling into the driveway of the museum, to start....erupting, really; there's no other word for it. She sort of burped, and scrambled eggs were pouring out of her mouth, for several minutes, while she sat there looking completely puzzled and the rest of us gawked in horror at what looked like a case of demonic possession. (For the record, scrambled eggs look exactly the same coming back up as they do going down; other foods do not have this property.)

So, Larry and I stripped her down and showered her with a water bottle we found in the car and put a fresh outfit on her (a miracle, really, that we found one in the diaper bag) and marched everyone into the museum. Of course, by this time, my stomach was feeling none too healthy and I had to make a supreme effort not to think about scrambled eggs. The museum was very kid-friendly and one room had a huge waterplay table, with dams and boats and little fountains, that the kids splashed around in, while Larry and I discussed what to do if Susie threw up into the water (we decided to pretend not to speak English); but we didn't have to worry, because all she did was pee all over herself and the floor instead, and no one noticed because it was so wet in there anyway. Yes, we are great parents. Thank you.

We steered the kids back to the car before anyone could get too hungry (no way we were feeding Susie again); so of course Brian cried because he wanted that nice picnic lunch (with lemonade) that we had packed for them and we told him that he had to wait until we got home. I don't really know what happened when we got home because I ran straight from the car up to my bedroom, where I lay for several hours in a fetal position trying not to throw up myself. One would think that after almost 16 years of raising kids I would have already encountered every stomach virus there is, but apparently I missed one.

And now we can just set that theoretical "number of days this blog has gone without mentioning vomit" counter back to zero.

Civil (and Stomach) Unrest

I went out for my walk this morning and spotted a police car, a fire engine, and an ambulance . Reason? There was a skunk wandering back and forth across the road in broad daylight with his entire snout (and eyes) stuck inside a plastic yogurt cup. A nearby resident had called 911 because they couldn't figure out what to do. And neither could anyone else, actually. Neither the firemen nor the policeman nor the EMT's were willing to grab a skunk from behind in order to free its head from a plastic cup. Mind you, these were people who would run into a burning building or go straight towards a gun-waving lunatic, but this skunk had them all cowed. I wish I had had a camera.

I came home, ready to regale Larry with this tale of suburban unrest, and found him rummaging around looking for a dishpan. Bad sign. As he's usually not overcome with an urgent need to wash dishes by hand, I had to assume the worst. And I was right - we were being visited by the stomach virus fairy.

S/he got Rachel this time, but I'm sure that within the week we all will have been treated to a dose of this lovely stomach flu. And, considering that Rachel's thrown up 4 times this morning with absolutely nothing in her stomach, it's gonna be a doozy.

One of our neighbor's boys (the one who didn't get his head laid open by Brian in our basement) broke his arm yesterday. And it wasn't at my house. Thank you, Lord. And there is a silver lining to this situation; at least while the cast is on, I'll be able to tell those 2 boys apart. I told their mother that, but it didn't seem to cheer her up.

Well, Rachel's decided to take a break from vomiting and have a nap; so I'm going to try to get everyone served lunch - not that anyone, aside from Brian, has much of an appetite today. Brian (aka Mr. Steel Stomach) could sit and eat a sandwich while watching someone puke their guts out. It's a skill he has.

Teen Angel (Not!)

My friend with a PhD in neurobiology tells me that there is an evolutionary reason for teen girls to hate their families - it helps them to move out and start making their own families. Scary thoughts of teen pregnancies aside, I think she was trying to reassure me that Anna's evident dislike of anything remotely connected with any of us is a natural occurrence and not my fault. But if (evolutionarily speaking) 13 or 14 year-old girls are supposed to leave the family nest, wouldn't it make sense that their brains not evaporate into thin air at this precise point in their lives? Sending Anna out on her own (and believe me, I've fantasized about it) would be like sending a 2-year-old into the world to make her own way. Rachel, at 5, is more street-smart than her sister.

Can you guess it's been a rough couple of days? Her best friend went away for a week, plus we didn't have time to take her clothes shopping this past weekend; so now we're bearing the brunt of her angst. I am so tired of her scaring the younger children. The tantrums do get rather boring after a year, you know. Yes, honey, you hate us. Now shut up, wash the dishes, do your schoolwork and think about going away to college, okay? Thanks. And you're right, we don't understand you - but would it help if we did?

And any of you who are getting ready to recommend How to Talk So Your Teen Will Listen or any other books of that ilk, forget it. The more we let Anna "express her feelings," the worse she got. Learning to grin and bear it is an important life skill, if you ask me. I've checked with several experienced parents of large families, and they agree that the no-nonsense, "get over yourself" method of parenting is the healthiest. This may be why the larger the family, the fewer the problems. To have diagnosed complex behavioral issues among your offspring, you need to have few enough kids that you have time to obsess over them.

Hoo, boy - I'm going to get an earful over that last statement. Hey, don't listen to me - listen to a guy who has adopted 10 kids, most of them with labels out their wazoos (I don't know what that means, either). Go to www.drray.com - the funniest parenting professional you could hope to meet. Enjoy some of his audio bits. From this page, for example -

http://www.drray.com/kidbits.htm

I've got to get back to benignly neglecting my children.

Heloise Goes to the Airshow

I received a handy household tip from a neighbor - baby powder stops wood floors from creaking. So I liberally sprinkled baby powder on the 2 worst spots upstairs (liberally, as in, I'm still sneezing) and smooshed it around with my hands until it sifted into all the cracks and....well, the floors still creak. I think they might creak a little less, though. My friend didn't tell me what to do with all the baby powder that didn't sift down into the cracks, so I smooshed that all over the rest of the floor in our bedroom (the whole house creaks, really). And there was still baby powder everywhere. Then I swiffered a few times. That looked better, so I quit.

But there was still a coating of baby powder on the floor, as my husband observed when he came home with the kids (yes, that was how I spent the precious hour-and-a-half I had to myself yesterday morning - spreading baby powder on the floor - I mean, when I wasn't folding clean laundry or trying to unearth the counters in the kitchen). He said, and I quote, "What the hell happened up there?" So I explained the de-creaking theory and urged him to go back up and take note of how much more quiet the floor in front of our bathroom sounded. I don't think I convinced him. No one appreciates an innovator.

Anyway, my husband, realizing that maybe I needed to get out of the house for a bit, took me and the 4 younger kids to the Flying Circus Airshow, which was only an hour or so from our house, but was plenty long enough of a ride for me to finally figure out how to cast on and do a spiral increase for the top-down hat I'm trying to knit. (No, you don't wear it top-down - that's how you knit it.) (Though, really, you can wear it any way you want to, I guess.) So I went along with his plan, and I'm glad I did (knitting progress aside). The trip was almost doomed to failure from the start, because I had to print out the knitting instructions for my hat and Larry asked me what I was doing and I said, "I'm printing out directions," and he thought, naturally, that they were driving directions for the trip we were about to embark on; but of course they weren't very helpful for that.

We made it there anyway. The field was full of airplanes from the 30's and early 40's, and we were able to watch them do all sorts of stunts, and there was a parachutist, and a wing-walker (her husband was the pilot - boy, I bet she makes sure never to get on his nerves, huh?), and a sort of pilot-clown, and a drawing for a free ride (didn't win - bummer). David was in heaven. It was all very old-timey, which was good, because I was able to spend 3 hours pretending that it wasn't even 2003 yet and we had never invaded Iraq. We all need a bit of a fantasy life now and then, you know?

We ended up feeding the kids crackerjacks in the car for dinner (it's a wonder someone doesn't arrest us), but they didn't seem to mind. My only regret is that we didn't insist on bringing Anna, so that she could see the joke with the clown and the privy and the airplane flying overhead (hint: the walls of the privy fell down) - she would have hated it. Which would have made it even funnier.