CURSED MUSEUM FOOD!!

Shortly after bedtime (isn't it always), the moans and groans began.

"Mama, my tummy hurts," yells Saia.  And our simultaneous and immediate canned response = "have you gone potty today?"  

[Sadly, with two under six-years-old, this phrase has become so commonplace in our household that Amy and I will often find we do this to each other as well, and, to our own great horror and surprise, no less than 5 times out in public so far.  But that's neither here nor there.]

Then sometime during Saturday Night Live, which we're ever only really half-awake for, we hear "the noises" coming from the downstairs bathroom.  By the time I make it to their bathroom, she's standing in front of the toilet, just completely drenched.  Like...dripping.  Yes, really.

And in this moment I'm grateful for two things.  1) That we happened to braid her hair before bed, and 2) Citrus-scented Fabreze. 

For your part, you should be very grateful I did not take pictures.

To her credit, our poor little baby, she miraculously managed to hold it in as she raced to the bathroom down the hall. There wasn't a single drop or chunklet between the 5-foot-spew zone around her bed and the toilet. Not a trace.

But that's about it for the silver lining.

What there was...was putrid puke soup ALL OVER HER ROOM.  Her pillows were covered, her blankets were soaked.  Her stuffed animals were nearing suffocation.  Her canopy coated in the chunky unidentifiable mess was dressed with stringy gunky things that dangled over her step stool.  But all of that was even....well, manageable.  What we both stood and just stared at in utter disbelief before we began to swoon with the toxic fumes was what used to be the WHITE carpet.

Again, the appreciate for lack of photographic evidence should be overwhelming you right now.

But once we got her all stripped down, cleaned up and changed, sponged and scrubbed and wiped up all remnants, flung open windows, Lysol'd every single inch of the entire downstairs, and emptied out an entire can of carpet cleaning foam onto her floor, we got her comfortably set up on a pull-out mattress on the floor of our bedroom, and, at least for the moment, she seemed to be finally drifting off to sleep.  

When after about, oh, two minutes, we heard "the noises" again from downstairs.

Chago, however, tends to not be so independent about these things.  And, literally, just sat up in his bed and spewed all over his pillow and himself while screaming and crying in between gags that he just didn't want to be sick and couldn't I just make it stop.

Cleaned up, clothes changed, more loads of laundry, more Fabreze.  

Rinse and repeat.

Finally got both monsters settled down on the pull-out bed around 2am.  But that's when the real fun began.  Up and down to the restroom for the next 5 hours.  And yes, of course they took turns (so it felt exactly like it did when they were 3 months old and not yet on a sleeping schedule -- i.e., the second we laid one down, the other one started to cry).  

But by 3:30 or so, we had it down.  We'd laid a trail of towels from the mattress to the bathroom.  On the back of toilet was a bottle of water for rinsing -- NOT DRINKING -- as everyone learned very quickly after chugging it the first time that it only made for a more watery grave for their bile the next time around.  Right next to the toilet was a container of Clorox wipes, so that after each episode, I could wipe down the entire area in the vague hopes that it might be the last time.  On the counter waiting for them, was a capful of their children's mouthwash.  Swish, gargle, spit.  And then onto the Costco-sized bottle of hand sanitizer, which they just hit mechanically as they trudged back to their makeshift bed, already half asleep before they even hit the pillow. 

It was a veritable assembly line of germicides.  But you better bet it was damn-well efficient, baby!

And then sometime on Sunday afternoon, we have no idea what time it was -- because on top of no sleep, no food, seared nostril hairs, and the delirium that had set in, SOMEONE decided it was the best possible day to change the clocks -- we all started crawling out from underneath our blankets.

The rest of our day consisted of chicken broth, napping, unsalted saltines (yes, I realize oxymoronicity of this), napping, bananas, napping, and Gatorade.

Still no idea what exactly they ate on Saturday that could've done this, but am not very happy with the museum today.

And, just a guess, but we're probably staying home tomorrow.