Like a Well Oiled Machine

That's what we were last night. At about 1:00, I heard her crying, like it was part of my dream. I stumbled my way down the hall to her room and as I reached to settle her, my hand felt a cool dampness. And that's when all hell broke loose. I called for backup as I held Little One an arms length away from my body, headed for the bathroom. I wasn't sure what was happening, but I knew what I had to do.

I heard LOML throw back the covers and sprint to her room. I swear we said, "it's vomit" in unison. Vomit matted in her hair, covering her ENTIRE body, smashed on the side of my face, rubbed into my shirt, running down my arms and in between my toes. I held my breath. Oh, the carnage. LOML was in full force, stripping the bed, locating all things contaminated like it was his JOB. Like we'd done this before.

Ten minutes later I had settled Little One back in my arms, clean, pitiful, and in fresh jammies. As I listened to my better half dry-heaving while rinsing the crib sheet and blankets and loveys and pillowcase of the chunks of who-knows-what, I knew I had the good end of the deal.

That lasted a good 3 seconds before we were both covered in puke again. Two sheet changes, two baths and a half, four t-shirts for me, a darn lot of plastic Kroger bags to line the trashcan, 4 hours, and a total of 7 heaving sessions later, she sleeps. Naked, no bumper pads, and with an unfamiliar blanket because we had already burned through 4.

Lessons learned:

It's really hard to teach an 18 month old how to aim into a trashcan.

Man up!...you will dry heave at least once.

A Hazmat suit might come in handy to take care of situations such as these in the future.

Check and re-check hair for vomit chunks before removing child from tub.

Everything is worse in the middle of the night.

Oh, and you will survive.