Catching Up All at Once

I remarked to a friend not even a week ago that I was pleased with the fact that, barring one minor instance of the stomach flu (and we got off pretty easily that go round), the little one has really been sick yet. Clearly I forgot to knock on wood.

It started Friday with a diaper rash. This particular rash caused much shrieking and whimpering and general unhappiness whenever it came time to change his little diaper. I did baking soda baths and everything else we could come up with, til I could call the nurse Monday morning. She declared it a yeast infection, not just diaper rash and so after naptime and lunch we headed straight for Safeway and the Lotrimin AF. Since we were out, I stopped to mail Tim's sister's Christmas present and then thought to run a few other errands as well.

We were nearly to the next destination when I heard the unmistakable sound of puking issuing forth from the back seat. This is not something I have been looking forward to as I've been a sympathetic puker my entire life. Even the smell of it pushes me perilously close to the edge. So to have my child in his carseat puking away was...unpleasant. It took great strength of will to quickly zip across a lane and into the (thankfully right there) gas station parking lot. Wherein I proceeded to pull him from his seat (swallowing hard as the half-digested mac and cheese flowed out of the car and all over me) and helped him finish puking there in the lot. Then I stripped him down, flicked out as much of the puke as I could, and decided that our plans for the afternoon had just changed.

I got us home and cleaned up and settled on the couch where I thought I could possibly get a little work done on my laptop while the baby snuggled in - until I heard the other unmistakable noise babies make. And then felt it leak through his jammies all over me. So we went back upstairs and cleaned up again, pausing to fill the washer with water and some soap so that it was a conveniently half-full tub for soaking the soon to come piles of fouled laundry. I think we're up to 4 loads so far - and we've cycled through all six sets of jammies twice.

Today I dragged him to the doctor, where he proceeded to grin and coo and wiggle around and generally act as if there was nothing wrong. I'm pretty sure that it was only the fact that he's down a pound from his 9 month appointment kept the NP from thinking I was completely off my rocker. Thankfully, he's not dehydrated to a hospital-necessitating degree. More thankfully he started being willing to drink (and keep down!) the Pedialyte as soon as we got home. (Well, there was one more puke episode, but we're agreeing to ignore that one.)

I think we're good as far as illnesses before the age of 1 now though. So I'd like to just put the word out for all those germs out there that, well, there's no room at our inn for ya, thanks all the same. Now...does anyone have suggestions for getting the smell of vomit out of my car?