A busy day outside to clear our heads progressed to barf and by midnight it was just a head in a bucket.

Me: Ellie, did you eat anything strange today?

When the kids are out Funkenhauzing, you never quite know who will eat what (or whom).

Ellie: Yes. Remember at lunch when I asked you how many carrots I had to eat and you said, all of them? Well one of them had a brown spot at the end. I think that’s what made me sick. It’s your fault Mom.

After playing outside all day; bike riding, stealing rhubarb, kicking the soccer ball, picking dandelions while being told they were collecting a bucket of beautiful yellow flowers and whoever had the most was the winner the kids were thoroughly exhausted. We went back outside for more fun after dinner came in for a bath and after the bath the following conversation had me chuckling.

Ellie: Mommy, my tummy hurts.

I think I said something about her being a great actress and this provoked a series of rage infused rants.

Ellie: Look at my face! This is my face when I’m sick (frowny face). This is my face when I’m pretending to be sick! (same frowny face). The resemblance was uncanny.

We walked down the hall almost side by side but she scurried past me and ran for the toilet and that’s when I knew this was the real frowny face, not the imposter. She was gagging and I was trying to tie her hair back but it’s in that in between stage of not quite long enough for the barf pony so I just made a half-assed smoothing motion.

I was planning to sleep in the girl’s room but what if Chloe got sick? Spoiler alert! She did.

We opted to shuffle around with the following totally logical over-tired moves.

I would sleep in Hanna’s bed Hanna would sleep in our bed. This way, I would be close to frowny face but wouldn’t be able to hear the baby through the monitor. Plan A was quickly scratched. Plan B. I would camp out on the baby’s floor beside her crib and could hear Ellie from the other room but be close to the baby as well. This plan didn’t help anybody because I was still too far from Ellie and if the baby threw up in her crib what difference did it make if I was ten seconds too late?

I moved my barf supply kit into my own bed, Greg opted for the couch and the baby came into the bed with me. I realized trying to get her to puke into a toilet made little sense unless I could hang her upside down by her toes. Why a toilet when there’s a perfectly semi-clean pair of frog pyjamas to spew on? I laid next to her wondering which of the many yawns would become an explosive up chucking spit across the old towels we were uncomfortably nesting on.

Greg entered the scene like a fish out of clean water and as usual tried his hardest to participate in the clean up. He froze a couple of times just staring at what was unfolding in front of him. He barfed in his mouth at least twice but was distracted when he realized the rags were his missing once white undershirts which kept him busy slinging questions about when I decided to make the conversion from shirt to barf catcher and why didn’t he have a vote?

Ellie: Help! Help!

While puking, she was racing to get something off her chest. Sure the illness was overwhelming but nothing could squash this kid’s eagerness to participate in a theme day at school.

Ellie wretching: MomcanI….blaaaaaaaaaah……..gasp…………..stillgotocolourday!!!blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

It took me a moment to realize, in between choking on bile, gasping for air, close to passing out from exhaustion, water streaming from her eyes, trying to operate on a total of twenty-three minutes of sleep, her delusional gibberish translated into a vomitous plea begging to be able to go to colour day at school in the morning.