Vomit rookies!

I'm going to list out the things that Travis and I learned Sunday night after Emily contracted a stomach bug. If you have small children and have not yet gone through this, they're probably good things to know!

1)  If she throws up once, she's gonna throw up again.  Get a bucket!
2)  If you have a plastic-backed mattress pad, you should always have that on the kid's bed instead of in the closet as a spare.
3)  If she says she's hungry just after she's thrown up, that just means that more is on the way.
4)  Put her hair in a ponytail after the first incident so she only has to get her hair washed the first time.
5)  Towels are great to put on top of pillows and sheets because they're easier to clean than a full set of sheets but still nice to sleep on.  Also, lots of smaller blankets instead of large comforters are easier to wash.
6)  Pepto-Bismol can't be given to kids under 12 because it contains aspirin-like drugs (we didn't learn this the hard way, don't worry).  The pharmacist told Travis (at 11:30 at night) that they don't carry the kid-version of Pepto because it's basically the same stuff as Tums. 
7)  Emily likes Tums.
8)  She won't necessarily wake up after she's puked, as evidenced by the small amount I found in her bed in the morning.

Travis and I were going upstairs to cut his hair at about 9:30 Sunday night, and we instead found that Emily was trying to figure out why her bed was suddenly full of food.  We had encouraged her to try one bite of asparagus at supper, and it was sitting squarely on her shoulder while undigested pork and bread were mashed in her hair.  Poor girl!  It's gotta be a strange experience if you've never thrown up before!  I spent the rest of the night trying to figure out if it was something I had fed her that made her sick, but in the morning we found out that her daycare provider and her daughter were both up doing the same activities at the same time, so it must've been a bug she picked up.  I'm almost relieved, since I hadn't been able to figure out what would make her throw up. 

But, yeah, we stumbled through the cleanup, and once she was warm and dry and settling down, she snuggled into my arms and said, very sadly and concerned-ly, "I had chicken all on me!!"  How do you not laugh at that???  Especially since we had just done such a stupid job of cleaning up, over and over.  The third time she yakked, we got it in the bucket, so we were 1 out of 4 on the evening.

Audrey is sitting up really well on her own now, and we just came back from her 6-month checkup.  I'm hoping she reacts well to her shots again like she has the first two times.  She's 95th percentile for head size and height, and 90th for weight at just over 18 lbs.  I'm glad she's proportionally sized, but what a big girl!!  She's had oatmeal cereal 3 times now, and she seems to like it pretty well although she needs some practice of actually getting the food down.  Weird to think that learning to eat actually takes practice!  So far, she seems to enjoy the experience.  Baby Emily HATED the rice cereal, so going with oatmeal to start seems to have been a smart move.  It's pretty cute how excited she gets, but we'll see if she's still willing to humor us when we start things like carrots and applesauce.

We had a great Mothers' Day (up until the puking started), with a trip to the park and a picnic lunch.  We had a quiet Saturday at home, too, so it was a great weekend.  Yesterday, Travis stayed home with the girls in the afternoon since Emily was sick, and I went to work which wasn't too bad either.  I got a new project, and on Wednesday and Friday I'll start two different projects - gah!  I swear they forget I'm only there half-time.  But I got an email from someone who may have a new position available for me, and he said in a couple of weeks he should know more.  I hope that pans out, but it's nice that it's going to take a little while because Travis's job transition will for sure take that long, and he's getting antsy (to put it nicely).  If my stuff develops before his, well, let's just say it's best that it doesn't!!