Something Always Comes Up...

After my days of frustration earlier this week, yesterday was a pretty good day. I took a shower in the morning (!) and even put on make-up. Jackson took a good nap (hooray!) and Adelyn took not one, but two solid naps. It's amazing how much of a difference those little things can make in the chaos level in my life. Suddenly there were ample opportunities to get the piles of clean laundry folded, do a few more loads, clean up the kitchen and tidy up in general. I was feeling much more calm and in control of life. Even though my clean kitchen was gone within minutes of my two older kids walking in from school, life seemed quite manageable again.

As I was making dinner Jackson started to get fussy- not an unusual turn of events. A few minutes later I heard Jackson start crying loudly. I turned and saw him standing next to a puddle of vomit with remainders splashed all over his clothes. "Oh good. Just what we need. I bet he has swine flu and the entire family is going to get it. Just great." I cleaned up the mess and got Jackson changed into clean pajamas as I desperately thought, "How am I going to keep Addy from getting whatever bug he has? How many times a day does he go over and hug her?" I took Jackson's temperature and while his temperature was totally normal, that wasn't reassuring enough to make me feel better. I tried to keep Jackson from going near Addy, but he didn't feel good and just wanted mommy to hold him. Meanwhile Addy had determined that it was mealtime and she wanted it NOW. Never mind that the spaghetti was boiling on the stove and would need to be drained any minute now. Sheesh. So much for my calm day.

Two more barfs and one pair of pajamas later, I got Jackson to bed. But not before resigning myself to my only option of sitting on the couch nursing Adelyn with Jackson snuggled up next to me, despite his chance of infecting her with whatever he had. Getting Jackson to bed was a challenge: he kept going around the kitchen asking for food: spaghetti? beans? rais-ies (raisins)? How do you explain to an almost-two-year-old that he can't eat anything even if he wants it? Given the fine results from the little bit of juice I gave him I wasn't going to risk him eating anything else. I went to bed praying that Adelyn would somehow have enough immunity from nursing to not get whatever Jackson had.

Jackson woke up this morning and appeared to be his normal happy self. After downing a bunch crackers and toast and begging loudly for more, he ate a full breakfast and kept it down. He then proceeded into his usual morning routine of trying to dismantle the DVD player and turning on the beeping handset finder in our phone before putting it in the kitchen cupboard for safekeeping.

Last night Camryn found a mostly-full sippy cup of curdled milk sitting around upstairs. Putting two and two together, that may have been the culprit for last night's episode, given that any sippy cup that Jackson finds immediately goes into his mouth. For now I'm crossing my fingers... but Jackson seems to be his normal self and we may have escaped the swine flu- for now at least.

Sorry if this whole post is TMI.... being a mom in general requires way too many up-close-and-personal encounters with diapers, vomit and other unmentionables. Did you catch the stupid pun I used for my title? That's how you can tell I've spent way too much time around 8-year-old humor and Captain Underpants. Did I ever mention that it still irks me that Jared gets all of the Captain Underpants books from the school library? Are they purposely trying to foil my attempts to direct him toward finer literature? Or at least books that don't include 10 or more uses of the term "wedgie?"

Now Jackson is on the counter turning on the garbage disposal and trying to figure out the toaster. I think that is my cue to go....