Silent but Disgusting

There are many things that we learn along the way that we distinctly do not remember learning. Some we don't remember because we figure them out before we're forming clear memories--like how to climb stairs or play with our genitals. Some we likely block out because remembering how terrible they were to learn would likely traumatize us for the rest of our lives--like how to climb stairs or play with our genitals. But there are many, and we don't really give their learning much thought until, MANY years later, we witness our children learning about these happenstances for the very first time.

Like sharting--or the "soupie poopy" as Libby grew up calling them (I don't think we had a cute name for them, choosing not to normalize them and, instead, focusing on the utter shame we should feel at letting them happen--at least that's what I ASSUME we did). They happen. And somewhere along the way we learned that, while suffering from bouts of diarrhea, it's advisable not to pass gas because it might be bringing a friend along.

Gabe learned this lesson yesterday. At least I HOPE he learned the lesson yesterday.

It's been a pretty awful week, really. For the third time in three months, we're passing a stomach bug through the family again. I have not had a stomach bug of note for nearly two decades, but I've been sick three times this year already. In Gabe's four years, he's only been quite ill once, until this year, anyway. Until these past few months, Norah had not been sick with anything but colds. Libby . . . well, Libby gets puking sick about every third month, so it's nothing new with her. Something terrible is going on in the world right now, and our family is suffering because of it.

Anyway, last week, Norah began to puke, like clockwork, one hour after she went to sleep. Every time. At night and at nap time. For five days. At the time, I was convinced that she was just working herself up crying and then puking as a result of it. She does that with a bit of regularity. And it just seemed too coincidental that she was ONLY sick one hour after going to sleep. After puking, she'd get up and be relatively fine after a few minutes, so I figured she had just learned that throwing up was getting her special attention and allowing her to come down from bed and play longer.

I still think that might have been the case, because that girl is the queen of manipulation, and I wouldn't put it past her to view projectile vomiting as a viable means to the end of getting to stay up another fifteen minutes.

But, once Gabe got puking sick, too, I began to give her at least SOME of the benefit of the doubt. He got sick in the middle of the night Sunday morning.

And it was the most disgusting puke that I have ever witnessed.

Saturday, we attended a 30th birthday party for my sister-in-law. At the party, Gabe ate the following things: over a dozen bbq mini hot dogs (we always called them monkey peckers, not sure what they are actually called), the frosting off two pieces of cake, two iced cookies, two cups of soda, and one piece of broccoli. When he puked in the middle of the night, the only thing I didn't spot was the broccoli.

Really, there is no other description for it but "meat puke." It smelled like a dog food plant. It had the consistency of soft cat food. And it went EVERYWHERE in his bed. It coated everything. And because it was still partially solid, when he pulled the covers off himself to get away from it, much of it slid off the covers and onto the floor. When we pulled the bedding off to wash them and transported them downstairs, far more of the stuff caked off until very nearly all surfaces of our house between his room and the washing machine smelled like the inside of a hobo on Vienna sausage night. Yet, as graphic as this description is, I really don't feel like it's doing the whole thing justice. It was vile and terrible.

My first assumption was that he had just eaten too much crap and run around too much that night, resulting in an awful memory for Libby and I and a valuable lesson NOT learned by him. But then we noticed that he was running a fever, too. And he spent much of yesterday suffering from the same fever. He puked a couple more times earlier in the day, but after a short time he discovered something else tragic.

"I tooted on you!" he said to Libby, seemingly feeling better. That's one of his disgusting little boy games now. He doesn't actually toot on anyone, he just tells us that he has after he farts. Which I suppose we should just count ourselves as lucky for, even though it's hardly an acceptable social habit to get into. Sure he's telling people he's farting on them, but he's not ACTUALLY farting on them, right?

Anyway, while he didn't actually fart on Libby, after he did some moving around, he very nearly shat on her, as a stream of sloppy squirts gushed around in and eventually out of his PJs bottoms and all over our couch, blankets, and pillows. He had no idea what was going on and was discernibly upset by the whole affair. After having spent the last six months more or less mastering potty training, I can see how a sudden and inexplicable failure would be somewhat crushing.

So Libby cleaned him up and ran all the blankets and such like through the wash.

And then it happened again.

And again.

And then we remembered, "Hey. We have a baby still wearing diapers. Why aren't we using those diapers in place of the underwear, clothing, and surroundings that are getting soiled?"

Which we did. Gabe was NOT thrilled about the idea. He protested quite strongly that he was not a baby and should not be wearing diapers. Eventually, we found a few leftover pull-ups from his potty training days and Libby was able to convince him that they were astronaut diapers (you know, like the ones that crazy stalker ladies wear on cross-country road trips). And he ended up being OK with that concept and wore the pull-ups the rest of the day, saving us a couple loads of laundry and much poop spillage on our environment.

This morning he's still suffering from the fever and obviously isn't feeling well. He has VOLUNTARILY spent almost the entire morning on the couch, which is not the least bit normal. Norah might pass a fair chunk of the day lying on the couch or sitting in the same spot coloring, but Gabe never does.

But when he first woke up this morning something possibly foreboding happened. In the middle of the night, he removed his pants to go pee in his little potty in his room. This wasn't unusual. For some reason, when he gets up from sleeping to pee, he almost always takes his pants all the way off then goes back to bed half naked. But when he came downstairs, we asked him if he wanted to wear his astronaut diapers again, just in case he had an accident, and he did. Then he told Libby that he LIKED wearing these astronaut diapers, and despite numerous prompts through the day, he's shown ZERO interest in using the toilet. So I'm kind of figuring that we've managed to take about a six month step backwards on the toilet training in the last 24 hours.

Ugh.