The Super Bowl

We're deep in the third quarter here in the Weaselsnark household.

And, by that, I mean that three out of four members of the family have now been struck by the stomach bug.

It started on Sunday night after the Giants victory (woo-hoo!). My husband woke up in the middle of the night and was violently ill. Food poisoning, he surmised, based on prior experience. My mind raced to what food we'd eaten that day. I couldn't think of anything that he had eaten that we hadn't all shared in our Big Game Smorgasbord. Uh-oh.

For the next few hours I vacillated between lying in bed in a state of wide-eyed panic waiting to dash to the bathroom myself and running upstairs to check on the kids to make sure they weren't "going number three" (my neighbor's euphamism for vomiting).

But the night passed without (further) incident.

Cut to Tuesday night. My daughter came downstairs at about 10:30pm covered in foulness. It was even in her hair. So gross. After getting her cleaned up, changed and settled in my bed I went up to her room.

Evolution has favored a special kind of parent adrenaline that kicks in to help in times of severe body fluid events. I know this to be so because there is no way I could have tackled what I found waiting for me in my daughter's bed if it weren't. Suffice to say, one pillow and several stuffed animals made the ultimate sacrifice. Ironically, the one thing left completely unscathed was the bowl I had given her ("just in case") to throw up in.

Whether my husband's food poisoning was merely a coincidence or whether, in fact, he was patient zero, I figured it was only a matter of time before my son succumbed to the stomach bug. So last night I took extreme preventative measures: I removed the comforter, books, extraneous pillows and his one beloved stuffed animal from the bed. And, ever hopeful, I left him with a big bowl and instructions to try to aim for it should the need arise.

And he did! That superstar came down at 11:30pm last night with clean hair, clean pajamas, and a bowl full of puke. My heart swelled. I was so pleased about not having to strip the bed and stay up doing loads of wash that I almost forgot to comfort my poor sick son. Although, in my defense, because he had avoided getting any throw up on himself he wasn't particularly freaked out or upset. He just washed out his mouth and went right back up to bed.

With a clean (super) bowl.

And then there was one.... tick, tick, tick....