Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled babies trying to breathe without the nebulizer, but please God keep your vomiting, stomach-bug infested babies from now on. Boy, I didn’t know how good we had it with the wheezing and the breathing treatments until last Thursday when Pumpkin was hit with “the stomach bug.” That’s right, not “a stomach bug” but THE stomach bug. From 11 PM until 7 AM we dealt with violent projective vomiting every thirty minutes like clockwork. I had spoken in hyperbole before about being “up all night” but this time we were literally, Up. All. Night.
Not only were we up, but we were disgusting, shameless wretches of our formal selves. Once her own bed was declared a hazardous waste zone, I moved her to ours. Being that she is still too young to explain the concept of hurling off the side of the bed into a trash can, I laid there watching her little limp body for the first sign of distress at which point I would cup my hands under her little mouth. The thought of what I was actually doing was so disgusting I just avoided thinking (which wasn’t hard without sleep and in the dark). It was all very robotic. I’d catch, Hubby would hold her little body upright to keep her from laying in anything, while I washed up, and then we would simply toss whichever of the bed items got wet on that turn into a growing pile on the floor. By 5 AM we were all three laying on a wet bare mattress reeking of vomit. It wasn’t a pretty sight and it wasn’t even the aftermath of a wild party – just a horrible, terrible, no good virus. A visit to our beloved Children’s Clinic the next morning confirmed nothing other than the onset of dehydration and the “highly contagious” nature of “the” virus (if that was, in fact, what she had). Well, what the doctor couldn’t confirm Mommy, Daddy, Pop, Nona, and Aunt Mandy all have by catching it.
Sunday afternoon, some pounds lighter and still with nostrils stained by the scent of upchuck I had to make a serious mommy decision – whether to bring Pumpkin to the Sesame Street Live show that I had bought tickets for weeks earlier. I spent the better part of the day in pajamas wrestling this one out with myself – I had lists of pros and cons that were in a dead heat. On the one hand, we had all been sick, I still felt like I had been hit by a Mack truck and – the best excuse I could come up with – Pumpkin still has no concept of anticipation, so she wouldn’t even know we had not gone; she never knew we were going to begin with.
That one should have clinched the win, but the sweet angel-mommy on my other slumped and defeated shoulder reminded me how excited she would be and how sick she has been for the past few weeks. She deserved some fun. She needed to get out of the house. That mommy won, of course. So there I was, no makeup, dirty jeans out of the laundry pile, and sunglasses acting as a hair accessory to hide the unwashed mess on top of my head.
After her initial clutching to me for dear life, Pumpkin really got into it. I felt like we were at a toddler rock concert. So there we are dancing, singing, clapping and pointing out “Ah-Mo” (read: Elmo) every time he crossed the stage (which, in case I failed to mention it, was quite often considering the by-line on the program was “Elmo’s Super Heroes”). One of the “perks” of sitting in the VIP area is that the muppet/puppet/people/animals/whatever-the-heck-they-are run down amongst the kiddos and hug them and high five them. Most of the kids thought this was awesome. I felt like Elvis had entered the building when Elmo himself made it down into the crowd. I had kids behind me screaming “I LOVE YOU ELMO” and (my personal favorite from a little boy about three years old) “WHAT YOU DOIN’ TONIGHT ELMO.” I’m not sure exactly what kind of wild post-show party that kid had in mind, but unfortunately for him I don’t think Elmo heard the invitation.
During all of this chaos, I kneel down on Pumpkin’s level to help her prepare for the excitement of meeting her second favorite non-human of all time (second to Mickey Mouse, of course). She is clapping and smiling, watching Elmo has he gets closer and closer. She watches happily as her friend Addison gets a hug and then, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for – Pumpkin’s turn to hug Elmo. Elmo starts to bend down to reach her and the next thing we hear above the crowd is a deafening “NOOOO AHHH-MOOO!”
Apparently, Pumpkin considered Elmo’s show of affection as an affront on her personal safety. Fortunately it seems that when you dress up a fictional children’s character for a living you don’t take such rejection personally (or at least that is what I was able to tell myself since I could not see his/her face under the costume), Elmo moved on and so did we (not before we bought a ten dollar Elmo head balloon, of course). I had talked myself into going to this event with the understanding and unilateral agreement that we were going to leave at intermission, but she was just having too much fun so we stayed until the very last piece of confetti fell. And I can’t believe I’m saying it but I’m actually looking forward to seeing Elmo again next year.
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