Etienne made us Mac and Cheese for supper last night. I saw a lot of that Mac and Cheese over the course of the night last night.
Before the kids went to bed Daniel complained of a sore tummy, we ushered him to bed, thinking it’s a delay tactic. At 9pm he comes into the lounge and proceeds to deposit much of the above mentioned Mac and Cheese on Etienne, down his back, his chest, on the couch and on the rug. We quickly jumped up and took the 3 steps out the front door for the main event to finish, Etienne gagging, Daniel crying and me (in one of my finest moments) laughing my ass off, all the time shrieking like a girl and repeatedly stepping in puddles of vomit.
Those moments are always special. You know a shower is inevitable, but you cannot compute the journey from front door to bathroom without any, er, spillage. So, I ordered my boys to strip and briefly considered hosing them down in the front lawn, but decided to let them back in to use the shower. But only just.
After their shower, a mopping, rinsing and carpet cleaning exercise, brushing Daniel’s teeth and changing his clothes we promptly stuck him back in bed.
30 minutes later Isabel vomits. In our bed. On my favourite pillow.
Rinse and repeat, more clothes and this time a set of bedding in the bath to soak. Bath, brush her teeth, change her clothes.
Another few minutes later, Mignon vomits all over the carpet in their room. More rinsing of clothes, brushing of teeth and sponging of child. We rolled our eyes and accused her of being a sympathy puker.
Things then briefly calmed down. At that point we were still giggling, but I had an inkling that we were in for an interesting night. Our kids are not prolific vomiters since their reflux days, so to say this was a surprise would be a grand understatement.
It pretty much went downhill from there. I stopped counting at 3 vomits each, in the end we gave up rinsing all the bedding and just added it to the ever-growing pile in the bath that would have to be dealt with in the morning.
There were vomit buckets which they missed with alarming regularity, instead opting to chuck up on their bedding or do the mad dash down the passage, only to decorate the bathroom, passage, door and walls. (That was a truly special mopping event, thank you Isabel)
And then it was my turn. Right after I took my last happy-help-me-sleep-pill. The only upside to this was that I was awake and standing by the side of their beds just in time to catch puke as it happens. Nothing would stay down, especially not the Valoid we desperately tried to get them to take. Or the pain and fever meds that we had to force down Daniel’s throat.
That he promptly delivered back to us.
Plus some leftover Mac and Cheese.
Did I eventually sleep? Not really, I was on high alert and my darling husband was snoring just loud enough for me to huff and puff. Plus, I was too nervous to sleep, we had just about run out of bedding and I was not taking any chances.
The only room in our house that wasn’t ‘decorated’ last night is our kitchen. So you can only imagine the horror on our poor domestic lady’s face this morning when we broke the news to her. Although I think our house wasn’t smelling too fresh by that stage anyway and the frantic opening and closing of the back door, dashing up and down the stairs and hosing things down outside her room must have been a giveaway.
It was like a scene from CSI, I had to stumble around the house this morning, pointing out all the spots she had to wash to remove all trace of our nocturnal adventures. I would have needed a LOT of those little numbered markers.
I’m pretty sure it is food poisoning, here’s hoping that we are all better tomorrow.
Over and out.