Guilt and Mommyhood OR How My Daughter Got Sick During Spring Break and Barfed Her Toenails Up OR How Raising Children is Like Getting Pecked To Death by a Chicken

Spring Break had occurred.  Our daughter, Cressy, had been counting down to it for weeks.  ("How many days until Spring Break, Mommy?" "Twenty-seven."  "How many days until Spring Break, Mommy?" "Still twenty-seven."  "How many days until-" "Still twenty-seven.  Stop asking or I'll make you eat broccoli.")

Then when the blessed event finally happened, all went well.  ("How many days until the Easter Bunny comes, Mommy?"  "Seven."  "How many days until the Easter Bunny comes?"  "Six but there's the calendar.  Stop asking me and count yourself."  "Hmm.  Hey, Mommy!  There's six days until the Easter Bunny comes."  "Mommy.  Still six days until the Easter Bunny."  "Mommy.  Why is your face turning purple?  That's so weird.")

And a couple of my mommy friends saved my bacon.  They were having an early Easter egg/dinner/get together for mommies event.  Yea!  I could converse with adults whilst my child played and frolicked in wild abandonment at someone's house with other girls her age.  I could drink a glass of wine.  One mommy friend was making ziti and another was making stuffed shells.  I could eat and gain five pounds instantaneously.  Plus I could finally come to one of their events because I swore that I would.  (Serendipity had played me false and I was afraid they were going to stop asking.  Pesky stuff like meteors falling out of the sky on top of the house and crap like that kept happening.)

Then it was the night before.  Everyone went to bed.  I was asleep.  I was having a bizarre dream about a purple lamb that changed into a girl and then into a pink lamb.  (I swear I have the most odd dreams.)

Pink and purple lambs were frolicking with abandonment.  (I'm loving that phrase.)  Dimly I registered something.

I was determined to keep in the whole purple/pink lamb dream sequence.  It was fun.  Nothing was chasing me as I tried to run away in knee deep sticky glue.  Our house wasn't getting repossessed by Cressy's Girl Scout leader.  (Another very odd dream.  Go figure that one out, Freud.)

But alas.  It was Cressy.  "What's wrong, baby?"  She stared at me with big eyes.  "I have had a calamitous event of magnanimous proportion, Mother.  You shall arise and attend me."  Not really.  What she really said was, "I threw up."  I believe I was supposed to give her an award.  So I got up, helped her clean up.  (Kid did good.  She threw up in her garbage can instead of on her bed.  She deserves a medal for that.  That's the first time that happened.)  Then I cuddled her for a bit.  She went back to sleep.  Then she threw up at three AM.  Then she threw up at five AM.

HIM, should I mention, slept through the latter two vomitous events.  Deep sleeping bastard.

So in the morning I give her Kool Aid (Grape of course) mixed with pedialyte.  She sipped it.  Once or twice every five minutes, just like Dr. Spock says.  So what happens?  She throws up again.  And again.  And again.  We had to trade off the garbage can with a big Tupperware container so I could clean the one out while the other one was in use.  (Not using the Tupperware container EVER again.)  Then she announces her stomach hurts and she tromp-tromp-tromps off to the bathroom and has diarrhea.  Whoo-hoo.  It's a double event.  Since she's not keeping anything down or in, I call the doctor.  Then I call my mommy friend and tell her we're not coming for the Easter Egg/Mommapalooza.  Cressy is NOT happy with either call.  She doesn't want to go to the doctor.  She does want to go to the Easter Egg-A-Thon.  Life is patently unfair.

So after we got back from the doctor, who said, "Kids got a tummy bug.  Keep doing what you've been doing," we broke out the big guns of entertainment.  First was the air mattress in the living room so she could lie down and watch TV without moving around a lot.  I had to get three blankets out plus one pillow.  (I had to fluff properly too, and there's definitely more than a little OCD genes in that kid coming from HIM.)  Then that was followed by virtually every stuffed animal in the immediate vicinity being transferred to the air mattress in the living room.  Our living room became the black hole for stuffed animals, sucking them in from as far away as Toledo.

What was left of the living room
after Hurricane Cressy hit it.

Whilst the fun was commencing and I had visions of cleaning up the living room until I was ready for retirement, Cressy said, "I told the bug in my tummy to leave, Momma.  And now it's in my throat.  So I spit it out."  Just as I was about to get my mind around that she started putting animals in the time-out chair for falling off the air mattress.

Apparently, any hapless stuffed animal who had the misfortune to fall off the air mattress was a bad example to the rest and had to go into time out.  Look, I even made a video on my droid for posterity.

Does this look like a kid who was just barfing up her toenails?  No, she doesn't.  But I saw her barfing up her toenails.  More than one time.  And I saw her other dirty, sinful business, so this was like the shortest, least extreme tummy bug EVER!

Seriously, hours earlier this kid was sicker
than dog doodoo.

So I made an error.  It's a typical parenting error.  I felt so bad that she'd missed the Easter egg festival and other mommy event that I said I'd take her to the store the next day and she could pick out a toy.  Her response, "Really?"  I said, "Yes, really."  You could see the little hamsters on the wheels in her brain working furiously going round and round and round.

The next day, SHE HAD NOT FORGOTTEN!  Au contraire, she could have quoted me verbatim.  I think she did quote me verbatim.  She was sorry that she hadn't gotten a written contract and video proof, but it didn't matter because she remembered every last little word.  "We're going to the store, Mommy," she said triumphantly, knowing that I had painted myself into a corner.  "The toy store."  "Umm?" I said because I hadn't yet gotten any caffeine in my system.  "The big toy store," she qualified.  "The one far away," she added slyly.  This kid isn't stupid.  "Then," she went on, "we'll go to Joe's Crab Shack."  (One reason for this is that she knows that Joe's Crab Shack is right down the street from the large Toys R Us and two is that children will be at the Joe's Crab Shack play area and she loves that.)

I think I was impressed that I was awake and that the world was still turning.  I didn't fight it.  I just went to get a large cup of tea with which to fortify myself.

So we went.  She picked out a toy.  We did Joe's Crab Shack.  There was a boy there she played with and fun was had by all.  The waitresses and waiters even danced.  Those poor silly bastards really have to work for their minimum wage.  (I should have broken out the Droid but I didn't think of it.)

When we got home Cressy showed me the toy she'd purchased.  And let me just say that I have comments.  Lots of comments.  I don't know where to begin.  But I took pictures with my Droid for emphasis.



The alleged toy for said sick girl.

 So the KooKoo Bird looks pretty innocuous, doesn't it?  But look it says on the box, there's a surprise inside!  INSIDE!  It's got a funky name, too.  This one is the Orange-Crested, Bug-Eyed Fezziwig.  (Bet you think I'm making this up.  Ha.  I don't have to, because other people do.)  So far, I'm okay with the toy.  But then I get a gander at the surprise.

Looking at KooKoo Bird's aft area.  Warning:
Not for those sensitive readers.

So one tips the bird over and looky, looky.  There's an area where it appears to have Velcro.  (God, I wish I'd had Velcro when something was shooting out of my aft area.)  Something may be inside.  All one has to do is to squeeze.  (I had a strange impulse to pant like a dog and resist pushing.)

Does this seem a little disturbing?

And when one squeezes, something begins to come out.  Could this get any better?  Someone better have cigars and champagne, let me tell you.  And where's the OB doc when you need one?

OMFG.  It has an alien egg.

Squeeze a little more and...poof...out comes an attached egg.  Seriously, there's a cord and it's attached so our offspring won't lose their offspring.  The KooKoo Bird, with some squeezy assistance, has had an egg.  And it's loaded.

The exhausted mother KooKoo keels over while
the baby has a yea-moment.

And the KooKoo Bird has given birth to a weird little miniature of itself.  Of course, the bird makes a funky noise, too.  (I really wish I'd had Velcro down there when I gave birth.  No, I had stitches, and believe me, nothing is ever the same.)  And look, you can stuff the bird back into the egg and shove that egg right back up that bird's derriere.  (This is not a true to life lesson for 7 year old girls.  She's going to be really shocked when she finds out how untrue this really is.)

KooKoo Bird Again.
Tell me honestly, doesn't this look like a really,
really, really pissed off pregnant woman on
the verge of losing her mind and/or
giving birth?

Here's the kicker.  This is what I know without even checking the facts for authenticity.  A man invented this toy.  He invented it while his wife was in the ninth month of a particularly hormonal pregnancy and then he giggled.  He giggled his ass off.  When he was done giggling his ass off, he giggled some more, and then he went and presented it to the toy company who decided this was great fun and a potential wonderific money maker of gargantuan proportions.  After all, it says on the box to collect all of the KooKoo Birds.  (Good thing Cressy skims over the words on the box and doesn't take commercials too literally...yet.)

Anyway, I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow.