The Joys of Parenting

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming (Philly travelogue) to bring you a tale of woe.

Tuesday nights are MY night. Jared works at the Washington DC Temple that night and instead of coming home he sleeps his office. The long drive home combined with an early Wednesday meeting means that sleeping at work gives him two or more extra hours of sleep. As much as I love hanging with Jared, it's kind of nice to have an evening all to myself. I can watch whatever I want on television, or shut out the world and read, or spend my evening sewing, and I typically stay up much, much later than I do when Jared's home.

This week I finally stumbled to bed around quarter to one after watching Dancing With the Stars, eating some Ritter Sport, and reading a few (okay, seven) chapters of The Way of Kings. I was just drifting off when Samantha came into my room with the news. Natalie had thrown up in their bed. Ugh.

I told Samantha to just climb into my bed to sleep and went upstairs to see to Natalie. I found her sitting in a puddle of vomit and clutching our "throw up bowl" which sweet Sam had gotten for her before she came to find me. Poor sleepy thing didn't know what to do and was too disoriented to even get out of bed. I helped her up and pointed her in the direction of the bathroom to get cleaned up, trying to avoid touching any vomit in the process.

As a parent you kind of get used to cleaning up your kid's bodily fluids. However, they typically take over that job themselves as they grow older.  Perhaps one of the most under appreciated parenting milestones is when your child knows how to (and actually accomplishes) throwing up in the toilet instead of all over their bed, the floor, and you. Until tonight, I thought we'd passed that milestone!

As much as I like to stay up late on Tuesday nights, cleaning vomit out of every stuffed animal Natalie loves too much to sleep without wasn't part of the plan. I gathered up all the  bedding, pillows, extra blankets (yeah, sheets and a comforter aren't enough she also needs a minimum of four special blankets), and stuffed animals and tried to figure out the best way to get them all to the laundry room without getting vomit juice on myself or anything else. There's just so much that needs to be washed - at least three loads worth of laundry - and the longer it sits there the stinkier it will become, spreading the disgusting fermenting nastiness through our entire house. Really, is there any smell worse than throw up?

Once all of the washing was downstairs I had to return to the scene of the crime to try and figure out how exactly I was going to get the mattress cleaned because you can't put that in the wash. The throw up soaked through the sheets and onto the mattress so the first thing was the get the mattress off and start working on that. But once I moved the mattress I saw that she had not only thrown up on the bed, but between the mattress and the bed frame as well. Surprise!

I slowly started disassembling things, cleaning up chunks as I went. First the mattress came off, then the bunkie board (yep, vomit on that) which was quickly followed by the wooden slats on the bed frame (throw up there too!). It even dripped down on to the Christmas tree box which is stored under their bed. There's nothing I'd rather be doing at 1:30 in the morning than cleaning up throw up, gagging all the while. Being a mom is awesome.

So now I'm pulling an all nighter while I cycle through loads of laundry in the hopes that I can get it all cleaned up as quickly as possible and get the smell out of our house. On the upside, now I have hours to read or watch television and the calendar for tomorrow is free so I can catch up on sleep then.