Fun Fun Fun in Western PA

Welcome to parenting hell. I sit, as I type this with one hand, upon my in-laws' couch feeding the boy a bottle with the other hand in desperate hopes that it will lull him in to enough of a stupor that the inevitable next step will be actual sleep.

It is nine am on Friday. We arrived here late Tuesday night. In the intervening time we have ascertained two horrible, unimpeachable facts. Fact number one is that Ruby has the flu. Fact number two is that Lupe is teething. In spite of the awful simplicity, banality of these causes, the truly awful power derives from their effects. The crankiness. The lack of sleep. The whining.

The vomiting.

And horribly, the effects in turn led to further ancillary effects. Crankiness, lack of sleep, and whining from the parents chief among them. There was indeed a brief vomit scare when Natasha was removing Ruby's clothes after one of her bouts. It was close, but somehow Natasha was able to bravely suppress the upheaval of the contents of Ruby's stomach, and so we are spared the ignominy of adding vomiting to the list of ancillary effects.

Ruby, of course, has not been quite as lucky. We have no doubt that she has been attempting valiantly to hold down what little has been in her tiny little belly. She seems to try to hold it in even as it comes rushing up. The horrified disbelieving look on her face, I think, has drawn me in to attempt to provide some modicum of comfort for her, and thus has been my undoing, rendering me much too close to the action. I would like to be able to say that these were rookie, or amateur mistakes made in confused ignorance. Sadly, I can't. I have lost count at this point of the number of times that Ruby has thrown up on me in the last couple of years. Somehow, it seems, whenever she does throw up, I manage to be in the way of the liquid reaching the ground.

I did, at least, manage to avoid doing so on this trip a somewhat remarkable two out of four times. Not that I took any discernible action to avoid the vomit. In fact, in spite of my previous experience in just such situations, I felt inexorably compelled by the look on her face to instead move towards her.

That, apparently, was my mistake.

As I moved towards her, the vomit moved towards me, and we ineluctably met. That, unfortunately, was not my last mistake. Had I availed myself of an opportunity to separate the vomit from my person in anywhere near a timely manner, the incident may have had diminished lasting effect, if you will. I did not, in the end, have the wherewithal nor foresight nor means to do so, and therefore went about the business of the day thusly.

I would like to think of my state in the kindest possible light, and that would undoubtedly be that I stayed that way in soiled solidarity with my poor daughter. Due to the unholy combination of the too-kind hearts of her parents, her enfeebled state, and her avowed hatred of baths (even in the best of times) she did not bathe until Thursday afternoon. I report this out of a shamed sense of duty, knowing full well how unkindly the authorities might look upon such a situation. But, in truth, that poor little child did indeed endure not only the insults of the virus' invasion and the resulting discomforts, but a night, then a full day, and then another half day with not only the residue of the vomit upon her skin, but so much of the stench in her hair that her mother took to pulling it back into a loose pony tail in no small part as an undoubtedly failed attempt to retain a basic level of hygiene.

Poor thing. And poor parents. As the old adage states, when it rains, it pours. Perhaps if we religious, we would look at this as a test, or search for some sense of meaning in the seeming randomness. We would be comforted and our self worth would swell at the knowledge that none is given more than they can bear. Unfortunately we are not, and must face the ergodic charms of life without such talismans. We must stare down such challenges as these with nothing more than a sense of humor and the insanely silly notion buried deep within our DNA that it is our primary duty to protect and provide for our progeny.

How else can one possibly explain our failure to run screaming into the night when we were deprived of sleep during these same days by a tiny tooth breaking its way free through the gums of our son.
Alas, we did not run screaming, although I am sure we were both privately tempted deep in our hearts at some point during the ordeal. Ruby is fully recovered now, and Lupe has been sleeping better the last few nights. But, damn, that was a bad stretch. Either one of them not feeling well would have been ok, and even both of them would have been bad but manageable had we been at home, but to have it all happen at once was truly the stuff of Christmas legend. And so it will go into the lore of our family...