07 December 2008

Holiday spirit

On Friday night, I made some popcorn, scooped it into paper lunch bags, and warmed up the car. The three of us piled into the Mazda at about 7 pm, excited to have a little drive just to look at lights. One of our nearby parks has a special lights display, and we've been going every year since before V was born.
V isn't often out and about in the evenings, so even the streetlights made her ooh and ahh. And the houses? This one was one of her favorites. (Pardon the blurry photography. Shaun refused to slow the car down for my artisitic pursuits. I kind of like motion pictures, though).

These were all on the way to the park. Once we got there, we gave our $5 donation, turned off our headlights, and drove ahead slowly to see the wonderment up ahead.

Then V threw up.

Seriously threw up. Barfed and barfed and barfed.

Oh, the poor girl. Shaun pulled over, I jumped in the backseat, and started trying to clean her up. She said "I'm not going to do that ANYmore. Let's see more lights." Sweet, lights-loving girl...no, we said, we're gonna go home. We'll come see the lights another time.

Okay, she said.

Friday was a long night, with bedding changed seven times, until finally, at 4am, we gave up and V and I came downstairs. She dozed on the living room floor, curled up around her emergency bowl. She moaned some. She slowly started feeling better. By last night, she was singing along with Ariel on the DVD.

Now, some of you know that stomach flu is much more serious in our house than the average preschooler's family. January of 2007, for example, was darn near the end of us all. In retrospect, doctors were pretty sure we had rotovirus or something equally sinister that week, and since V only threw up about 9 times total in the last two days, we're feeling like we got off easy. So far. Shaun still has this paralyzing anxiety associated with vomiting, but we've been working on it in the last two years, and so long as we can manage to get sick just one at a time, we're hopeful we can handle this like a normal family handles the stomach flu.

But we're not making any promises.

In the meantime, here's hoping y'all can enjoy the lights with no further drama, and may the stomach flu skip your house entirely this year.

2 comments:

Megan said...

Oh my. Fortunately, I've only had to deal with throwing up on one occasion.

I was getting a bra fitting at JC Penney's one afternoon. I was in the large fitting room because I had Avery with in his stroller. I was standing topless while the Penney's employee went in search of bras my size when suddenly Avery projectile puked. It was everywhere! The fitting room walls, the floor, his clothes, his stroller, my shoes...everywhere!

When the nice lady came back I apologized profusely, changed Avery into some pajamas I had thankfully purchased earlier at another store, and hightailed it home.

My son obviously believes in quality above quantity, because he hasn't thrown up since.

Anonymous said...

Oh poor V! What a trooper! My sister just went through that at Applebees. Yay... so much to look foward to!