Spring Cleaning

Somehow, I've managed to make it through four years of parenthood without having to do a full day's worth of Vomit Laundry. Today, I feel like I've finally been initiated into the Inner Circles.

I have friends whose children throw up when they get a little sick, even if they're not really that sick. Suzannah has never been like that. In fact, I think the last time she really threw up she was under a year old. She runs fevers quite easily, but she's not a puker. Until last night. Last night she was awake for several hours, throwing up on every single spare sheet and blanket we had in the house, not to mention all of her pajamas. She'd fall asleep and we'd think, okay, she's done. But then she'd wake herself up by throwing up again. (Matt did manage to catch some of it in a trash can, but the poor girl just seemed so confused; I imagine it must be kind of a scary sensation for someone who has never really thrown up before.) By seven o'clock this morning, she was sleeping on the afghan from the back of the old green couch in the study and wearing old purple sweats.

I wanted to cry, because it was a beautiful day here, warm and sunny, and I canceled Very Fun Plans (photoshoot with the kids at the beach, with our favorite doula and wonderful friend!) to stay home and run twelve hundred loads of Vomit Laundry. But because I am such a sunny, positive person, I have managed to put a good spin (SPIN! HAHA!) on something as icky as Vomit Laundry, namely that all of these blankets we have lying around the house, and all the spare sheets and towels, could really use a good spring laundering anyway. And after I coaxed Suzannah into the tub this morning, I scrubbed that, too. By tonight, I thought, this house is going to be so clean!

(Don't worry, guys, sometimes I annoy myself, too.)

My mom remarked that we're pretty lucky to have made it so long without one of these puke-filled days. My biggest fear right now is that Matt and I will contract this little bug ourselves, and I spent a bit of time today remembering this completely horrible night three years ago, otherwise known as The Worst Night Of Our Lives, in which just such a thing happened. Suzannah had had a bit of a tummy bug for a day or two -- not the puking kind, the other kind -- but I didn't think much about it, since Matt and I felt fine. One night, I made a batch of stuffed peppers for dinner. Matt sent me a message before he left work that evening, something along the lines of, "I'm not sure I'm going to be up for eating much, I'm feeling a little off." In Matt's world, "feeling a little off" apparently translates to "having to pull over and vomit on one's shoes by the side of the road before making it home from work." He wasn't in great shape when he walked through the door.

Matt went to bed and I ate a serving of peppers myself, still feeling fine. I nursed Suzannah, still feeling fine. I begain to change her diaper and then, mid-change, felt very suddenly NOT AT ALL FINE. I managed to stagger into the bedroom, hand her off to my groggy, nauseated husband, and proceeded to spend the next twelve hours losing the rest of my pregnancy weight.

Matt and I still talk about that night. We each have a very distinct memory of sitting in the family room at three o'clock in the morning, sipping ginger ale. I was nursing the baby and trying not to die. He was...I don't know, just sipping ginger ale. We both agreed that that ginger ale was the best thing we had ever tasted, and also, that life totally and completely sucked at that moment. (The baby, by the way, was wide awake and happy and expected entertainment and snuggles and all sorts of unreasonable things, which is probably partly why we think of this night as The Worst Night Of Our Lives.)

Here is a fundamental difference between Matt and me, though. The next day, I laid alone in the guest room (I did not want anyone near me or touching me or breathing on me, and also, since I'd been getting out of bed roughly every twenty minutes to crawl to the bathroom, I thought it was rather polite of me to not disturb my husband's rest), thought about dying, and came to the conclusion that I didn't much care whether I died or not. I sipped ginger ale. Sometime in the late afternoon, I think I nibbled some crackers. I must have nursed the baby. I hope I interacted with her.

Matt mostly took care of Suzannah. And around our normal dinnertime he said, "So, I think I'm just gonna microwave the peppers from last night. You probably don't want any, right? Should I just make them for me?"

"You are NOT going to microwave those peppers."

"They actually sound pretty good."

"OH MY GOD, THROW THEM AWAY."

"I'm not throwing them away! It's perfectly good food!"

"Fine, microwave the peppers. But I should tell you that I am not coming out of this room until you have scrubbed every inch of the kitchen with Pine Sol and eradicated every last smell of stuffed peppers, and also, you're in charge of the baby until then."

And then I slammed the door. And the man ate the peppers, because Winslows don't waste food. (He did, however, clean up the kitchen quite nicely.)

I haven't cooked nor eaten a stuffed pepper in three years now. This makes my husband very sad.

Anyway, I remembered this story today because I had plans of trying out this new recipe for tuna noodle casserole -- simple and full of vegetables and something I could easily make from food we already have around the house. But after about the seventeenth load of Vomit Laundry, I sent Matt this message:

Um, so maybe I won't make the tuna casserole tonight.

He wrote back, I know exactly what you're thinking.

I mean, I wasn't sure whether my slight queasiness was due to washing Vomit Laundry all day long, combined with not much rest from the night before, or whether it was due to something a little more sinister. Either way, I wasn't taking any chances, because I don't want to have to not eat tuna, or vegetables, or spiral pasta, for the next three years.

We had pancakes instead. And so far, we all feel fine. Wish us luck.