I say I’m not feeling bloggy and then inspiration strikes.
Sticky inspiration.
Let me begin by telling you how my day began. Baboo woke up about 5:30 ready to nurse. She did. Then she vomited. Baboo has stomach flu. Baboo vomited once or twice more. I cuddled her, calmed her, changed her, and cleaned up the messes. (Lather, rinse, repeat).
Then it occurred to me that we had no food in the house. No really. None. No milk. No bread. Not much of anything that could possibly work for breakfast, let alone lunch.
You see, I could have gone grocery shopping on Friday. But Friday was payday. Also the Friday before the Superbowl. To enter the commissary under those conditions would have been suicide. Circumstances didn’t allow a trip for the rest of the weekend either.
And so, at 8:00 a.m. this morning I bundled up my sick Baboo and my getting over a cold Little miss and we went grocery shopping–just for the essentials. Let me also note that it is incredibly windy here. And cold. I struggled to keep the van on the road. Then I struggled to keep the shopping cart, myself, and my kids all upright in the parking lot of Safeway (because the conditions were still too scary to think about the commissary).
So home we come… Baboo is able to nurse and keep things down one time, and then she falls asleep. It occurs to me that this would be a good time to get a shower if I want one today, so I wisely jump in the shower leaving Little Miss to watch a video she loves.
Whilst in the shower, I relax, thankful for the warm water and a brief minute to myself. Standing there I think, “I better not enjoy this too long. Who knows what Little Miss could be getting into.” At that comforting thought, I rinse, dry off, and wrap a towel around myself. Before going to dress, I go out to see what Little Miss HAS gotten into.
First, I note that she looks guilty. Then I see that there are puddles and puddles of a clear liquid–at first I hoped water–scattered across my kitchen in the sink area that leads to the dining room. Oh, and Little Miss is walking in it. Back and forth, back and forth. But it’s not making a sloshing sound. No… It’s making kind of a sucking, sticking sound.
Wisely, I ascertain that it’s not water.
Little Miss is having a ball, by the way, fascinated by the sensation of sticking to the kitchen floor. Oh, and she’s covered from head to toe in stickiness.
So I scan the counters, and the table…. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary at first, and then my eyes lock on it.
An empty bottle of Karo Syrup.
And then Little Miss stammers, “I jus’ was dinkin’ some.”
Briefly my mind skims over the fact that my daughter has just ingested half a bottle of pure sugar and that the rest of my day is sure to be….. BUSY, and then I realize I need to take care of the situation in front of me before my child becomes a human pinball.
It’s true. Puddles of Karo syrup were scattered all across my kitchen and dining room (which is carpeted by the way…. Obviously the people who designed the home layout didn’t have toddlers…).
Oh and by the way, I still only had a towel wrapping around me. So I tell Little Miss to SIT right where she is. I hurriedly find some clothes. I come back and thankfully she is still sitting.
I run some bath water, strip Little Miss down, pick her up, and plop her in the tub. Washed her, got her started dressing.
Then I dumped water all over the syrup and mopped like a mad woman.
Scrubbed the carpet.
It’s only noon. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the day holds in store.
What can I say? It’s just a day in the life of a Mom…. Stomach flu, vomit, high winds, and Karo Syrup.
And they say this job isn’t mentally stimulating.
Stumbling Barefoot... 
OMG. You have my complete sympathy and remote hugs. What a day! I know the vomit thing is never any fun, regardless of how much ingesting the stomach has done beforehand. My kids have been sick so many times thanks to lead poisoning…. Yick. And then Karo on top of that. Good heavens.
Hope the day gets easier!
Oh wow. I can only imagine the frustration. I guess all the syrup came up ok? My youngest is 8 now and I have trouble remembering if any of the three of them did anything like that. (or it has been blocked as a dangerous evil memory) Vomit stories, I gots plenty of. Anyone with kiddos does, I suppose.
On the topic of not identifying puddles immediately. . . I was working when this happened and poor Scully had to deal with it. Somehow or another, my then toddler darling daughter, my center child now (I call her my center child because the Universe is centered around her 12 year old princess hiney) locked our cat in the pantry. The cat managed to poke a hole in the bottom of a 3 gallon jug of vegetable oil, which proceeded to leak out into an ever growing puddle on the linoleum floor.
Enter Scully into the kitchen, barefoot. ::squish:: What tha? Following the puddle to its source, and not realizing the cat is in the pantry, Scully opens the pantry door. Out flies our black cat, COMPLETELY covered in vegetable oil, like greased lightning through the house, trying to find a hiding place. Scully puts the container of oil in the sink and tosses a towel over the oil slick in the kitchen floor and goes in hot pursuit of the slicked up cat.
She eventually finds the cat, I forget where, and discovers that he has been cleaning himself of the vegetable oil. She wraps him in a towel and does what every cat owner hates to do, bathes the cat. Twice to get all the oil out of his fur. A quick call to the vet insures us that he isn’t going to die from ingesting who knows how much vegetable oil, but to have rolls of paper towels at the ready. This poor cat was hurling from one end and making rather nasty messes with the other for 2 days.
At least Little Miss drank liquid sugar and not vegetable oil. 🙂
Just proves we mothers have so many different situations to deal with each day. Keeps us on our toes! Hope baby girl feels better soon.
Wow, that’s amazing. A bottle of karo syrup, clear and sticky and carpets, you have had quite the morning. I totally feel for you though, when I take a second to jump in and out of the shower I often wonder if W.W. has decided to get his stool and eat toothpaste or any other thing he can reach too. Here’s to a better afternoon and no stomach aches. : )
You poor thing – Karo syrup? Eeks!
I am so very sorry. It sounds as though a lot of the Karo was on the floor – maybe Little Miss missed her mouth and most was on the ground. Ben likes syrup – it is now hidden behind the cereal boxes on the top shelf.
Will visit again soon.