Over the weekend we went to a play my brother in law was in. My sister in law watched the kids at her house so we could go (she had been to his show twice already). I was a little nervous because we hadn't been to their house since I was pregnant with E-man. Not knowing where he may try to escape from can be a little stressful. My in laws know us very well though and had everything on lock down with my sister in law on E-man and my 16 year old niece on Little Buddy. It's basically man to man defense when we are out and about. At home is more of a zone defense strategy, it works out pretty well. And thanks to our fantastic family we got to enjoy the play.
We got back and had dinner, the kids played a little longer and things started to wind down. The drive home is two and half hours, so we headed out a little early.
We were on a little windy road in the mountains, over looking the whole city with all the lights. I pointed it out to E-man (LB was already conked out at this point), he looked at it and smiled. Just as I was starting to think about how my favorite part of parenting is when you share something with your child and watch them discover something new, E-man puked.
Like exorcist style retching, all over himself, the car seat, the floor around him and the big toy pirate ship we brought for LB. My warm cozy feelings vanished, as we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere with a barf encrusted child. Just as he finished vomiting he sang the chorus of Heart's "Barracuda" that we had playing. Neither Martin or I had ever heard him sing the words. Hearing his little voice weakly sing "barracuuuda" right after puking was so dang cute we started laughing at the situation we found ourselves in.
We quickly came up with a plan, we pulled over, I wiped him down as best I could while Martin called his mom to see if we could come clean up more. Grandma to the rescue! She was home and helped us clean everything up when we got there and we spent the night.
What's even funnier is that earlier in the day I was feeling so proud that I had prepared so well for this trip.
Murphy's law of parenting #312: don't get too smug about your prep skills or your kid will barf and or poop their pants in a really inconvenient location.
Here's the thing though, getting through the weird parenting curve balls almost always make a great story you can laugh about later.
I'm all about the silver linings.
