Tag Archives: stomach virus

Mom Math

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1 + 2 = fighting

 

You are exhausted and the kids are wild. Subtract the pain of getting them into the car from the total number of wiggles to get out.

A friend reports the pukes at her house. Count backward to the last time you saw them. Devise a theorem to prove you are not in danger.

Your own kids get the pukes. Add up all the things you are going to miss for the next seven days.

Amount of fun at the bounce house divided by the germ potential equals whether or not you go.

Child is teetering off the deck railing. Count the number of steps to reach him and divide it by the milliseconds left until he is in free-fall.

You get a headache. Base your medication choice on how many hours until your husband comes home.

One twin is falling off the slide while one twin is running into the parking lot. Quick! Who is most at risk?

You have ___ minutes until someone cries. List the things that you have to do and then prioritize them. Start with number one. Calculate if you will make it to number two.

Your toddler’s whines are growing into sobs. Calculate number of feet to the nearest exit. Will you make it there before sobs turn into wails?

Two 3-year-olds does not equal one 2-year-old plus one 4-year-old.

It is unseasonably warm outside. Your kids are tired and grouchy. Weigh the importance of exercise versus the importance of nap and decide which has more value. Show your work.

You see your child lick the arm of the chair in the doctor’s waiting room. Devise a hypothesis about your prediction of illness onset.

Your baby just woke up from nap/finished nursing. It is time to leave. How many minutes until a poop blowout?

Your baby just woke up from nap/finished nursing. It is time to leave. How many hours do you have until you have to be back home again?

Children are begging for snacks. Multiply how much they didn’t eat at lunch by the number of minutes until dinner.

Subtract the kids’ bedtime from your bedtime. The total number of hours between their bedtime and your bedtime is The Golden Ratio.

Does your need for Netflix outweigh your need for more sleep? By how much?

One twin is sick. If you infect the other twin on purpose right away, you will only have to miss three days of work instead of five.

Use the Richter Scale to determine how much stress one more child will add to your family.

Subtract your current age from your best guess of your onset of menopause age. Take that number and shove it deep into the bins of baby clothes you refuse to get rid of.

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Things a Momma Thinks as She Gets *Really* Sick

See the fear in my eyes?

See the fear in my eyes?

As every mother knows, there is nothing quite so bad as being very sick while caring for sick children. A mother’s brain is full of thoughts as she sinks into a delirium from loss of electrolytes.

Panic thoughts: NOOOOOOOOOO!

Denial thoughts: I’m sure that I just gave myself salmonella from that raw cookie dough I ate. It’s not really a virus. The kids will be fine.

Desolate thoughts: I am all alone. No one can help me. No one can come in or out. We are on our own. I am Tom Hanks, and this toilet is gonna be my Wilson.

Calculation thoughts: It’s 5:45 AM. I can puke uninterrupted for another 20 minutes before the kids wake up. I have to call my husband before 6:30 AM if I want any hope of dragging him back home again before his meetings start. But I can’t call him just yet, because it will wake the kids if they hear me talking. So I will call him at 6:20 AM. He can make it back maybe within one hour of my call. This means I will have to fix breakfast for the kids while puking.

Ridiculous thoughts: Why didn’t we eat that leftover chicken kabob or those ripe avocados already? Now we’re gonna waste all this expensive food this week. It’s just gonna sit in the fridge while we drink Gatorade.

Berating thoughts: Why don’t you ever freaking keep Gatorade in this house?! You have a year’s supply of food storage and five 72-hour kits, and you can’t remember to stock up on Gatorade?! Oh, wait, I remember now. Mr. Okayest drinks it all. It never lasts in storage. And why haven’t I cleaned this toilet lately? Gross.

Self-pitying thoughts: Why now? Intestines, are you really serious right now? The one weekend I had arranged for a sitter? I babysat a friend’s kids last week to earn babysitting co-op hours FOR THIS?!

Confused thoughts: I can’t do this. How do other mothers do this? What if all three puke at the same time? Do you use buckets or towels? Or Tupperware? Do you lean them over? Why don’t I know this already? The twins books didn’t really explain double-vomits. Furthermore, how will I even get down the stairs? I’m so tired.

Maudlin thoughts: This is the end of me. It will never be spring again. I will never eat food again. I will never smile again.

Bargaining thoughts: Please, God, please let me get my strength back before my husband goes down too. Please please please. Someone has to care for these children.

Oh, and remember how I said there is nothing quite so bad as caring for sick children while being sick? Well, there is. It’s when your cousin calls and says he has an extra ticket to your favorite band tonight.

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How I Ended Up on the Side of the Road in My Undershirt with Someone Else’s Vomit in my Mouth (Did I Go Too Far?)

My Mom is Just Okay

Okayest Mom’s Okayest Week

Moms can have REALLY bad weeks. Perhaps especially stay-at-home moms can have really bad weeks, if for no other reason than time. Maybe we are more likely to experience a disgusting event simply due to the amount of hours we log. It’s all about statistics, baby.

Sometimes things happen that may have never happened in the history of the world. Like #1. Sometimes things happen to moms that must happen to every mom in the whole world, but no one ever talks about it. Like #8.

Here are some parenting-fails that happened this week:

  1. Two of my sons were driving matchbox cars ON MY BOOBS during church and I didn’t even notice.
  2. One of my 1-year-old twins shocked my dog. I only knew this when the 100-pound dog yelped and leaped into the air. My son had gotten his fat hands on her shock collar remote and sent her flying.*
  3. One of my 1-year-old twins threw his big brother’s jammies into the toilet. I lifted the lid to pee and found dinosaur jammies in there. Bonus: because the jammies were fleece, they had soaked up ALL the water in the toilet. Try getting THAT to the basement washing machine.
  4. All three of my children have splinters in their hands that I can’t get out. Bad news: Our stupid deck is so rotten that it constantly gives the kids splinters. Good news: Our stupid deck is so rotten that the splinters just dissolve on their own.
  5. We finally left the house and, upon arriving at our destination, I realized that my twins were sharing Crocs as footwear. By “sharing”, I mean that each twin had one black Croc and one blue croc on his feet. Bonus: all four of those Crocs were on the wrong feet. What is the statistical likelihood of that? Bonus: all four of those Crocs belonged to their older brother.
  6. One child pooped ON the deck TWICE in one day. **
  7. One child vomited ON another child.
  8. One child vomited IN my mouth. I’m not talking baby spit-up in my mouth- that happens to everyone. I mean real kid-vomit. I didn’t sympathy-barf because I was too busy telling myself “That did NOT just happen,” while trying to keep the barf off the van upholstery.
  9. The child who vomited in my mouth did so on the side of the road, while I was only in my undershirt. (My sweatshirt had already been ruined earlier.)
  10. I made dinner for the kids and put them to bed in between my own pukes.

Not trying to gross you out here, I swear. I just think that there may be other moms out there who will find relief in knowing that they aren’t alone. Instead of crying, I texted a friend immediately after #8 and begged her to tell me that has happened to other moms. She simply replied, “Yep.” So, if your week was gross and terrible, I am here to tell you, “Yep.”

 

*And, okay, people, I don’t want any hate mail about that shock collar. It was recommended to us by a trusted professional who has extensively trained us and our dog for reasons that you don’t know anything about.

** Isn’t it awesome to have more than one kid, so you can share something as embarrassing as this semi-anonymously? I mean, you will only have a 33 1/3% chance of getting it right if you were to guess. And I am not accepting guesses.

Crocs Fail

Crocs Fail