The Vominator

There's no way to ease in to this topic, so I'm going to leap in with both feet -- VOMIT!

Actually, leaping in with both feet is more than just the cliched use of a literary device, it's a literal fact. In order to deal with the Italian's vomit situation early Sunday morning, I truly had to walk through approximately twenty square feet of vomit-covered hardwoods and carpeting. And why? Because the Italian was in the living room and needed a clean shirt and a blanket from his bedroom. When your kid is sick and shivering, you walk through vomit to help him.

I was in bed when it started, having finally fallen asleep around midnight. The Italian woke me up at one-thirty by poking me in the back.

"Dad?" Poke, poke. "Dad?" Poke, poke, poke. "Dad, I threw up."

It doesn't matter how soundly asleep you are, those words wake you up in a hurry. For starters, your son is sick and needs to be cared for. Secondly, somewhere in the house is a mess that needs to be cleaned, and the sooner the better.

We've enjoyed our share of award-winning vomits during our parenting years. There was the time the German puked up Cheetos all over the back of the driver's seat in the van. There was the time Our Daughter projectile-vomited goldfish crackers four feet across the room, smack into the middle of her Mother's chest and deep into the piles of a shag carpet. There was the time Our Daughter, having finally had the chance to try RavioliOs after years of resistance from My Lovely Wife and I, permanently stained the carpet around her bed. The Italian's Sunday morning vomit easily qualifies for nomination in several categories.

Let's begin with coverage. I walked over to the kids' bathroom to survey the damage only to find myself caught in that fragile mental state between uncontrollable weeping and giddy laughter. There are days when the horizon doesn't stretch out as far ahead of me as that field of vomit did on Sunday morning.

God bless him, the boy tried to make it to the bathroom once he realized what was coming. He jumped out of bed and ran to the door, but never got it open before Vesuvius erupted. It hit the carpet with such force that the door and nearby wall were splattered more than a foot high. Knowing there was more to come, he pulled open the door, stepped into the small hallway, and let loose with another ricochet trick shot on the hardwood floor. It took me fifteen minutes just to make a safe path -- not clean, mind you -- to his bedroom closet.

For more than three hours, I wiped up the hardwoods, wiped down the walls and baseboards, depukified the doors, and scrubbed the carpet. Amazingly, the only other person awake in the house was the Italian, and only because he threw up five or six more times, albeit under controlled conditions. Even the German remained unconscious, despite the fact I was scrubbing for over an hour just feet from his bed. After the sun came up and all eyes were open, we broke out the carpet cleaner and attempted a proper deep clean.

The end result is yet another permanent stain, although perhaps not as noticeable as some others. Years from now, if we try selling the house, I might have to come up with a new name for the carpet color. How about "Nutty Brown," or "Dark Chocolate?"

Would you believe they have a carpet color called "Outback Rib Sauce and Chunky Mashed Potatoe?"




© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Vomit: Greatest Hits

Children ought to arrive with a manual that dedicates at least three lengthy chapters to vomit.

If the site of vomit, the smell of vomit, or even the mere mention of the word "vomit" makes your stomach queasy, then I've got some bad news for expectant parents. For the first couple of months, babies are little more than adorably cute containers of drool, poop and vomit. Squeeze them too tightly or bounce them on your knee a minute too long and you'll see how quickly all that drool, poop and vomit can magically overflow, sometimes simultaneously.

And if your wife is anything like mine, you won't even have to wait for the baby to arrive before you become proficient at handling vomit. At first, I carried her morning sickness bucket like it was filled with radioactive waste. I walked it to a remote section of the neighboring wooded lot and dumped it, then stood a good distance away and sprayed it with the hose. By the time Our Daughter arrived, all the bucket got was a quick swish of water from the spigot and a spritz of Lysol. If any got on my shoes, pants, or in my hair, I no longer cared. Vomit and I had made our peace with each other. Ours was a live-and-let-live relationship.

But that tiny bit of morning sickness vomit is nothing compared to the mass quantities produced by a late-night-breast-milk-binging baby with the upset stomach and an inability to walk to the bathroom toilet. Ever try cleaning vomit from the intricate spindles of a baby crib? Don't worry, you will.

Or how about toddler vomit? When Our Daughter was two years old, she spent much of one visit with relatives circling a coffee table slowly devouring almost an entire bowl of gold fish crackers. A couple hours later, she stood in the crib provided to us and projectile vomited a direct hit at her mother's chest from a distance of five feet. Let me assure you, you know it's a quality vomit when one parent spends two hours cleaning undigested gold fish crackers out of a shag rug and the other has to bathe the baby, take a shower and run a load of laundry.

Or how about the first time they get sick on their bedroom floor? My mother used to tell us to throw up on our beds if we were going to get sick. "I can put your sheets in the wash," she'd say. "I can't put the carpet in the wash."

But there's something counter-intuitive to vomiting on your bed and, in effect, all over yourself. Your body understands vomit is a thing to be shared, so it makes every attempt to spread it out as far and wide as possible.

For instance, were we to go back and visit the house we lived in when our children were born, I would not be surprised to find a barely discernible pink stain on the floor of the back bedroom where, one evening, Our Daughter released a torrent of Raviolio-tinged vomit. It was a monumental achievement, really, and proved too tough a match for any chemicals and carpet cleaning machines money could rent. We were somehow spared the joy of finding out what happens when a boy sleeping on the top bunk throws up in the middle of the night, but that doesn't mean our sons haven't had their share of incidents.

The German once decimated our van with a wave of nausea, again possibly inspired by gold fish crackers. I missed that one and have always felt a bit left out. By all accounts, it was mighty impressive and required some extreme detailing of the leather seats.

And the Italian, well it's been only a few days since his last performance. You would think by age twelve he would have figured out where vomit belongs. Only minutes after he agreed it would be a good idea for us to get him a bucket, but before we were able to get it to him, he sat up on his bed, hurriedly proclaimed "I think I'm going to need that bucket," and immediately proceeded to puke all over the floor. Also hit in the onslaught were his bed, his brother's bed, a bookshelf, three Lego sets, and the storage bins under both their beds. Best of all, I had just given him bubble gum flavored Ibuprofen and the only food he'd eaten in the previous hours were Twizzlers.

Some day I'm going to find out who the genius is who decided it would be a good idea to pack the medicine parents administer to sick children with enough red dye to stain clear through to the floorboards and give him a good, swift kick in the pants.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Blood, Guts & Giant White Socks

Of all the genes I could have passed along to my children, the two I hoped would at least end up being recessive are those responsible for my extreme lack of pigment and random nose bleeds.

Sunburns are no fun, take it from me. Some people spray on a light coating of SPF 10 or 15. I encase myself in SPF 70 and allow the required time for it to soak in. My Lovely Wife still can't believe I got a sunburn at the State Fair in October almost 20 years ago when we started dating.

Fortunately, our daughter browns better than a buttered turkey in a 400-degree oven. And the boys, despite their apparent paleness, both aquire moderate tans during the summer months.

As for nose bleeds, I had some doozies when I was a kid. One time in high school, just before the homeroom bell rang, a gusher came on and there wasn't a tissue in sight. I walked the length of the building to the nurse's office trying not to bleed on anyone, occasionally taking advantage of the situation to gross out a few friends along the way.

Unfortunately, the Italian seems to be carrying on the tradition of the bleeding nose.

Evening hours seem to be his shnoz's favorite time of day to let it flow. For the most part, the problem is easy to deal with and far less disgusting to clean up than the average upchuck, which occurs far more freqently than bloody noses do. I venture to guess I've cleaned more vomit off floors, out of carpets and bed sheets and clothes, out of buckets, and off the backs of toilets than a janitor in a bulemia clinic.

When she was two or three years old, our Darling Daughter projectile-vomited several pounds of fishy crackers across a room, nailing my Lovely Wife square in the chest and almost destroying a shag carpet. We spent hours cleaning up that unholy mess. Thank goodness it didn't happen in our house...

In fact, the nose bleed is a no brainer by comparison. Sit the child on the edge of the bathtub, lean his head forward a little, pinch the bridge of the nose, and wait for it to stop.

A few months ago, the Italian got out of bed with a nose bleed and wandered into our bedroom with his hands up to his face. In his short pajamas, and with his complete lack of insular body fat, he sat in the bathroom shivering while we tried to stop the bleeding. I offered to get him something to keep him warm but he didn't want me to leave his side. So, I did the next best thing -- I took off my socks and put them on his feet.

It was one of those moments when you wish you had a camera, because you know you will never be able to recreate the moment, not that you would really want to if you could but you know what I mean. There he was, in shorts and t-shirt, eyelids hanging heavy over tired brown eyes, holding a tissue under his nose, giant white socks pulled halfway up his thighs, and a dreamy smile on his little face. He still had them on the next morning at breakfast.

I much prefer that image to the one that woke me a few nights ago around 1:30am from a deep slumber.

My eyes slowly adjusted to the light from the television. I had been asleep for less than an hour, having worked late into the night writing my book. My mind was struggling just to figure out where I was when I felt a nudge at my back. I turned over to find the Italian hovering over me, looking like an extra from a zombie movie. Blood covered the fronts and backs of his hands and his entire face was smeared red.

I like to think I don't frighten too easily, but I have to admit I found myself struggling to remember how to spell 9-1-1. I've seen dying snake-bite vicitms on the Discovery Channel who looked healthier than this nine-year-old, blood-stained boy standing at my bedside.

Getting him cleaned up, stopping the bleeding, and tucking him back in bed without waking anyone else in the house was easy. Getting myself back to sleep was the hard part.


(c) 2011 Mark Feggeler