1. I’ve heard that a house divided cannot stand. Now I know that a house with two squeamish people also cannot stand. It will not survive! I was sleeping soundly when I heard a panicked yell. I jumped out of bed and raced into Jim-Jim’s room thinking Jim had found the boy dead. That’s the level of urgency I heard in his voice. I opened the nursery door to Jim shoving a puking Jim-Jim in my face. I rushed the boy to the bathtub to help him finish, and I cleaned him up. Not long after, Jim came into the bathroom and apologetically said he needed me to clean up because he just couldn’t do it. So, I grabbed my Lysol wipes and got to scrubbing. After cleaining the room I moved on to the laundry. As I was rinsing puke from the boy’s sheets in the sink before throwing them in the washer, I heard Jim-Jim in the bathroom start up again. And then I heard Jim join him. Both of my boys were puking in the bathtub together, Jim-Jim because he was sick and Jim because Jim-Jim was sick. I don’t know what we would have done if we both couldn’t handle it. Move, maybe?
2. After going into JJ’s room 30 minutes after cleaning up the first explosion only to find him vomiting again, I decided we needed a new plan because we were fast running out of sheets. I laid on the couch, and JJ cuddled on top of me and fell asleep. I didn’t quite know how it was all going to work out, but I had a bucket ready at my side and my hand on his stomach to feel the contractions, hoping I would have enough time to get him over the bucket before the pyrotechnics started. As vomit ran down my neck and pooled behind my head, I decided I needed a new signal. That’s when I discovered JJ grinds his teeth before he blows chunks. I got so good that I could kneel him in front of the bucket before he knew it was coming. I’m sad to say, though, I had a lot of practice.
3. In the delirium that followed cleaning up puke for 19 hours, I came up with a few website names. The website would be dedicated to posts about hating vomit. I came up with:

www.partiallydigestedfruitsnacks.com
www.pukebomb.com

A fellow blogger has already taken vomitpopsicle.com, so that one’s out. Makes me wonder if she had a similar experience. What would YOU name your anti-puke website?

Case in point: Jim-Jim and I went to the park to play and stopped by Wal-Mart to pick up a prescription on our way home. I let Jim know I was stopping by the store, and he texted me a list of items to pick up. You know, very important stuff like chips and ice cream. While wandering the aisles, I got a call from Lydia (Jim’s sister) letting us know they had made it into town from Louisiana and would need our pack n’ play for baby Elle while they stayed in a hotel during a conference. She was at Wal-Mart and would stop by afterward to pick it up. Well, no need! We met on the ice cream topping aisle, and I had my pack ‘n play in the car- it had been stuffed in my back seat since our Christmas travels. It was February.

How easy was that?! I do believe God pays attention to the seemingly insignificant details of our lives. And I’ve convinced myself that God used my laziness in not unpacking the pack ‘n play to bless Lydia’s life. You’re welcome, Lydia. I’ll be lazy for you any time!

We would be lying if we said we didn’t miss the boy. We made sure we got back to Nana’s in time for Jim and the boy to catch up over a glass of milk before Jim-Jim went down for the night.

It was extremely neat to see a bond begin to develop between Jim-Jim and Andrew. A bond I am excited to see strengthen as the boys grow up, and Jim-Jim is less into stealing toys and throwing tantrums and more into toilet papering houses and stealing Mommy and Daddy’s car to do donuts in the Dairy Queen parking lot. You know, stuff boys can really bond over.

We truly do appreciate your honesty in pointing out that one of the hub caps was missing. Thank you for that. But I just have to ask, was your eagerness to get rid of the toy directly related to your child’s ability to throw a temper tantrum that registered 7.3 on the Richter scale when you asked him to get off the car to eat dinner? Or was it when you told your child to leave his new car in the living room so he could take a bath and he threw a temper tantrum the entire duration of bath time, going so far as to throw himself down hard enough to dunk his head under water as he screamed, nearly drowning himself…repeatedly. Or was it when you were rocking him that you decided to pass this toy on to some other unsuspecting parents as you listened to your child pathetically repeat the word “caaaaar” in a forlorn voice as if you’d dangled the one thing that would ensure life-long happiness in front of his face only to take it away for forever.

Can we meet at, oh, the same intersection so we can return this treasure to you? You can keep the money, really, you can. In fact, we’ll pay you to take it back! How does $50 sound?

See you at 5?
Jim and Kara

There are very few days that we are both slow at work. Either Jim is swamped and can’t write, or I’ve got so many patients that making a few key strokes to let my snuggle bunny know I miss him (as vomit-inducing as it is, that is something we’d write!) is not going to happen. BUT there are those rare days when we’re both mind-numbed from boredom that we get to communicate a lot. Those days are dangerous. Those days we spend money. Because Jim has time to slow down and figure out he hasn’t asked me to buy anything in oh, say, 20 minutes, so he comes up with a laundry list of things he ”needs”.  

Today was one of those days. My schedule was wide open because I switched my day off this week and I was in the office when I normally am not, and Jim had very few classes to teach. Our list of “needs” went from finding clothes for Jim-Jim to this…

 to this…

to this…

And we ended up with this…

On the upside, when Jim-Jim turns 16 and asks us to buy him a Mercedes Benz, we can tell him we already have. When he was two.

I wasn’t feeling as jovial when he sat next to me during dinner and stole food off my plate, repeating, “Share”, each time he stole an onion ring. EVEN THOUGH he had onion rings remaining on his plate as he stole mine! I realize teaching a child to share is a process, but we seem to be stuck in the let’s share when it benefits Jim-Jim stage.

It was time for an object lesson. I stole onion rings off his plate and repeated, “Share”, each time I did. Since I don’t foresee this phase ending anytime soon,  I’m going to have to remember to put the Kara-sized portion on Jim-Jim’s plate and the Jim-Jim-sized portion on my plate.

After rocking for a few mintues, I put Jim-Jim down to walk him over to his bed. He made a break for it to grab his toy car he thought was on the floor. And he came back with one of his palm-sized cars in his hand. Ooops. So there was a car on the floor. Seeing his giddiness over finding his treasure, I could tell he wasn’t going to fall asleep just yet. I sat back in the rocking chair, and Jim-Jim climbed onto my lap to rock a while longer as he held his car in his hand. When he began to drift off, his hand relaxed, and the car fell to the ground. Tragedy! Jim-Jim’s breath caught in his chest as I ran my hand across the carpet to search for the lost car. I couldn’t find it in the dark, so I told Jim-Jim it was lost.

Not willing to accept that, he whimpered. I asked him if he wanted to go search for the car, and he answered with a hearty, “Yes!” He hopped off my lap and went to the side of the chair where the car had fallen. After he climbed down, I set my arm on the arm rest of the chair, fingers clenched into a ball. Jim-Jim was about to fall to his knees to search the ground when he looked at me sideways, wheels turning. Jim-Jim grabbed my clenched fist and unraveled my fingers, one by one. With my palm exposed, he searched my hand for the lost car. Jim-Jim thought I was hiding the car from him! I don’t know that I blame him. I mean, I told him fifteen times there was no car on the floor. Maybe I should start wearing my glasses when I rock him. Or better yet, I should trust his young eyes instead of relying on my own near-sighted vision!