AND THE STOMACH BUG COMETH

So, shortly after we got home on Friday afternoon, Saia got sick. Like, out of the blue, no warning, really messy spewing kinda sick.

And for the rest of that afternoon and into the early evening, we spent our every minute trying to make sure that we were getting back into her everything she was letting out. And knowing that nothing in her diet was different, and there were no surprise birthday parties at school, it could only be that our Little-Miss-Perpetually-Has-Her-Fingers-In-Her-Mouth picked up a nasty little tummy bug. What a shocker.

And nasty it was. But poor thing was such a trooper. Up to the potty. And back again. Up to the potty and back again. Wipe, clean, wash, sanitize. Up to the potty and back again. It was exhausting just watching her.

But she's always so good about trying not to get anything dirty. She's always so conscious of her body and really can tell when it's coming, so that she almost always gets there just in time. And she's very good about doing what she's told when she's sick. She follows instructions to the tee and will make every effort to put anything in her mouth that I give her. And because of that, it was really no surprise that she woke up the next morning feeling so much better.

Hunh. 24-hour bug, I thought. So, we walked downstairs and I started preparing breakfast when I suddenly heard the heater fall over behind me. Turning around, I saw Saia staggering towards the fridge, her arms outstretched, flailing blindly, her eyes completely dilated, her skin had gone pale white.

I grabbed her and fell to my knees, calling for her to look at me in as calm a voice as I could muster. "I can't see you, Mama," she kept saying. And I was completely petrified.

I immediately laid her down on the floor and raised her feet, and almost instantly saw the color return to her cheeks, and her focus return to her face. "I can see you again, Mama. What happened to me?"

[I'll have nightmares about that moment for the rest of my life.]

Some juice, granola bar, a blanket and feet elevated for a while, and her blood pressure quickly, thankfully, returned to normal. She'd obviously gotten up and got moving way too quickly for someone with so little in her belly. So, she spent the rest of the day on the sofa watching all her favorite videos and being catered to by the entire family, as we filled her back up with all her lost liquids and solids. By this evening, as she reluctantly worked on her homework and read her 20-minute book, you could hardly tell she was ever even sick.

Except, of course, for what she inevitably left in her wake.

Chago started in first thing this morning -- which we were, yeah, kinda expecting. But he is NOT a trooper when it comes to these sorts of things. He hardly ever makes it to the bathroom in time, and jerks and kicks and flails as he hangs his head nearly 2 feet above the toilet, refusing to bend down close enough to minimize the splashing (sorry, but if you made it this far, you can make it to the end), and suddenly loses the ability to speak, moaning and groaning and grunting and grumbling, digressing into prehistoric man, pointing at the things he wants and shunning the things he doesn't. He's so hard to predict and even more difficult to comfort. But the second he throws up -- no, literally, the very second he's done -- he looks up and smiles and says in his most cheerful voice, "I feel better now!"

So, after a very unexpectedly long and exhausting weekend, amidst the lovely lulling odors of Lysol, Clorox orange wipes, and Fabreze, we wrapped up the evening with a chapter of Harry Potter and smiles on both their faces.

Let's nevermind the fact that I'm suddenly starting to feel a little queasy myself.

...