Last Friday was a typical morning in the Williams household. Mom and Dad woke up early to attempt to get ready for work before the kids started waking up and needing bottles,"extra milk," diaper and clothes changes, and of course, cartoons. Miraculously, both children were still asleep at 7 AM - pretty good, huh? - so Dad went to wake up Autumn and Mom traveled upstairs with her customary glass of "extra milk" for Reid. As soon as I rounded the corner and could see his crib, I could tell something was off. It looked like he had something on his shirt. Reid must've heard me come in the room because on cue he rolled over to look at me and the lower half of his face was completely covered in dried-up, crusted vomit. Oh NOOOOOO! It was all over his sheets and pillow and blankets...even poor blue monkey got a dose. How this poor kid could throw up in the middle of the night without calling out for us is beyond me.
I immediately asked, "Reid, are you sick?" To which he replied in the most pitiful of voices, "I spit up..." Then, I couldn't help but laugh when he said, "I want to get the crusties off my face." Poor baby. We, of course, immediately took a bath to get him all cleaned up.
Considering Mason had just had reflex surgery less than six months ago, it's really not a good idea for him to catch any sort of GI bug. So he took Autumn off to school and I stayed home with poor Reid. I draped the couch in towels as I did not want a repeat of his last GI bug when one glass of milk somehow looked like fifteen when it came back up all over the couch. We spent the morning watching cartoons and then he took a nap with me in my bed. By the time he woke up, he was completely fine. I found out later that day that out of the 23 kids in his class, about 14 of them were out with this thing. Yikes!
Since I still couldn't believe that he had not called out for me I thought maybe he had just thrown up in his sleep, not really aware of what had happened. So I asked him, "Reid, when you spit up last night did you wake up and spit up and go back to bed or did you spit up in your sleep?" To which he replied, " I woke up and went back to bed." I said, "Well why didn't you call out for Mommy?" To which he said, "Because it was lightning and funder (thunder) and I was scared." I know this means he must've actually woken up because there really was a somewhat nasty storm out that night.
I had heard form other parents that their children had vomited multiple times in rapid succession over a several hour period with this bug. So I asked Reid, "Did you throw up once or more than once?" He said, "More than once." I said, "How many times did you spit up?" And he just looked at me with the saddest of faces and voices and said, "Lots Mommy." Oooooh not much can make you feel worse than to realize that your 2 1/2 year old spent the entire night retching in his bed over and over and you did nothing to make him feel better.
Unfortunately Daddy came down with the bug on Friday afternoon and man was it bad. That's all I'll say about that to spare all of those involved. Poor guy.
