Tick...tick...tick...

Last night at 10:30 I told Chris I was just going to read one more chapter and then I’d turn off the light. Two minutes later a small person named Ellie knocked on our door and announced, “Um, I'm really sorry but I just threw up on my bed.”

And so it begins.


A moment of peace in the middle of a raging storm


The poor girl is so sick. She was tossing her cookies every 10 minutes for three hours. After that it got a little better, but she’s still struggling to keep anything, even Pedialyte, down. Thankfully, she has developed good aim, and The Throw-up Bowl (which we haven’t been able to bring ourselves to use for food for going on ten years now) is always close by.

And, amazingly, her sisters slept through the whole ordeal. Somehow my children have developed that uncanny, but incredibly useful, ability. No matter who’s doing the heaving, or how horrendous it is, the other two always manage to sleep through it.

But we all know that the stomach flu is like a time bomb. I’m just waiting to see who will be unfortunate enough to get in the way when it goes off next.

Please let it not be me...