Sick Babies

Well it was inevitable, but I was hoping we'd survive until a later date. After all, we are hoping to make a two day drive by car in less than five days. But how we plan things, are rarely how things go.

Emma woke up from her nap today and I brought her to my room so I could get a few more minutes of rest. She climbed all over me, and played queen-of-the-hanger (more of a battle for possession) with PC's cat, Olive, and occasionally would lay her head down on the bed and suck her thumb for a minute or two before resuming activity. Then she came over to me, and it seemed like she was trying to get into my arms. As I started to move to accommodate her, I realized she was about to chuck her insides outside and with no time to spare, I managed to dodge all of the mess, although the bedding on my bed wasn't so fortunate.

When Emma was done emptying the contents of her stomach, I gave her water, but she kept it down for a grand 30 seconds max. I gave her a bath, put clean clothes on her and collected all of the sippy cups so she couldn't help her self to more torture. Then I tackled dinner, stopping every few minutes to re-wipe Emma and clean up her latest mess. After the first two times, she really didn't have much to throw up, so the messes were pretty tiny. She ate a little dinner, and kept it down until about 15 minutes after I let her down from the table. Then I had to change her clothes again, but after that she seemed to settle down.

And then, just as we were starting the get-ready-for-bed process, PC joined the ranks of the retching. He lost all of his dinner (and he'd had seconds for a change!) and just like Emma, he couldn't keep even the tiniest sip of water down. He was able to warn me, and we made it to the toilet the first time, although, he didn't realize it wasn't over after the first heave, so the second one mostly missed. Once I got him cleaned up, his clothes changed, and the bathroom cleaned again, I finally got the kids into bed. But PC has been up three times now to throw up the tiniest amounts of almost nothing - the poor guy, his dry heaves are so miserable to watch.

And now, I'm waiting for Dolly to succumb. As a precaution, I took most of the blankets away from all of the kids, so I'll have some clean ones if they happen to not make it out of bed during the night. The bathroom light will stay on and the toilet seat will stay up as well.

Hopefully this is over pretty quick. None of the kids have fevers, and the only clues that I had that they might not be feeling well, was a little loss of appetite on and off over the last three days. That and they have seemed a little more tired recently, but I wasn't expecting this.

Anyway, we had plans to drive down to LA starting either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, but if we're all going to be sick, we may not be going anywhere. In the meantime.. well, I need to go make the rounds again, and then I need to change my clothes one more time. After that I can tackle the kitchen cleanup!

But I was wondering... I thought the bug that was being passed around right now was more of a extra-long lasting head/cough/sniffles cold rather than some sort of flu? 'Anyone have any tips on this one?