Snow Days and Stomach Flu

Have you ever woken in the middle of the night for what seemed like no apparent reason only to discover that the vague feeling of unease that tickled your consciousness away from your dreams was more than a headlight driven shadow or the cat prowling? I had one of those night. It began with the a start. One minute I was sleeping, dreaming about needing to be somewhere and not being blessed with nocturnal OnStar and the next I was having a conversation with Rob, who was clearly still asleep. After ascertaining that it was indeed safe to ignore his nonsensical interest in our open window, I had no sooner closed my eyes when Katy was at the side of the bed announcing to no one in particular that she needed to puke. Can any utterance get a parent out of bed faster?

Kate made it to the top of the landing with me still battling the armholes of my robe when I had the first tell-tale gags followed closely by retching. When I arrived on the scene she was done - for the moment - and the cat was eyeing the small piles of barely digested pizza like it was manna from heaven. That was 3:30 A.M. and aside from about an hour and a half between 6 and 8 A.M., I didn’t get back to sleep until close to 11 A.M. by which time Katy had finished emptying the contains of her tummy throughly and Rob had called in sick with not so vague tummy rumblings himself. (My poor but wonderful husband did all the clean-up by the way from mopping up the floor to emptying and rinsing the waste-baskets.)

The day itself turned out to be snowy and blowy and a good day all around for not venturing out. I napped til late afternoon and awoke to find both my patients as I had left them, watching videos and sipping liquids and having pretzels. I am not sure the last part qualifies as light fare for troubled tummies but as long as it isn’t coming back up - it’ll do.

Unfortunately, Katy will miss her winter concert performance tonight. She was to be the jingle bells and stand in the front row. Luckily the kindergartners had given the same performance yesterday for the grades 1 through 3 and she still has her ballet performance on Saturday afternoon.

Not exactly the way you want to spend the day after a great birthday but I’ll take it anyway. Home with my loveys who are now on the mend and thankful that my own bout with this on Sunday means that perhaps we have jumped this winter hurdle and can look forward to a healthy, happy Christmas.