I will warn you up front in case some of my emetophobe friends follow – there are stories of vomit and diarrhea to follow. If you’re eating or queasy, you might want to read this later!
I’m operating on very little sleep so please excuse any and all typos and/or grammatical errors. They’re usually my pet peeve but today I will give myself a free pass. It’s true (not allowed to say that word but I’m gonna anyway, ha ha!), rotavirus has STRUCK. If you do not know the joy and pleasure of rotavirus, consider yourself lucky. It is the stinkiest shit ever to grace the earth, and I mean shit in the literal sense. It is accompanied by vomiting, low-grade fever, and oh yes, more stinky diarrhea. On the bright side, it’s one of those that kids usually only catch once, or that subsequent infections are nearly asymptomatic and not troublesome. For that reason, my olders and myself are probably safe but my 5yo? He’s hit. I expect the 3yo to follow any time now.
It started yesterday. We had a great evening planned. I picked up my daughter from her basketball practice, and had been commissioned by her to fix her hair like Taylor Swift for a masquerade un-ball she had at school last night. So, we stopped at Taco Bell for a quick dinner and headed home to work on food and hair. We ate quickly, and the boys set about playing football on the ps2 while I worked on her hair. All of a sudden, my precious 5yo goes screaming across the kitchen, spewing black jack taco remnants all over the floor. Ugh. That shit smells and looks disgusting as upchuck (not that anything looks particularly appetizing, but this was particularly vile) and it was freaking everywhere. I immediately had daughter get on the phone to her dad, because we were supposed to leave in about an hour to take her to the dance. And then of course I was supposed to pick her up from said dance at 10:00, a little difficult if you’re sporting puking 5 year olds.
So, I set about cleaning up the kitchen but did a half-assed job because I was only halfway finished with my daughter’s hair and if you’ve ever been or ever known a 14 year old girl you know that hair is very important for a school dance. She was kind of panicky, but I give her credit for holding it together. I’m back to fixing her hair and poor little fella gets hit again – this time he thankfully makes it to the bathroom and hits the toilet. Yay for good aim! Threw him in the bathtub and head back to hair central. About this time their dad shows up to pick them up, but I’m still not quite finished with her hair. It’s more Miley Cyrus and less Taylor Swift, but I still think it looks cute. Her dad agrees. She is very self-critical and thinks she looks horrible, and she’s not happy with the lack of curl close to the root, etc., but she realizes that time and circumstance are not our friends tonight and she says it’ll do. With all the hoopla we didn’t get a picture of it all done, but here it is before we picked it all out:

Before the final picking
And here’s the mask we made:

For the masquerade un-ball
She also got picked as captain of her basketball team, so I’d guess she had a pretty good day yesterday.
But back to the saga.
Poor little sick guy was up all night alternatively puking and pooping. I have to say he did a very good job of making it to the potty and I’m right proud that I only have to do one load of sheets and blankets this morning. Good job, right in the potty! But the stink, oh that stink. Rotavirus poop stinks like nothing else.
I expect 3yo to start with the puking and pooping any time now, it seems rather inevitable. It’s only a matter of time. I also don’t expect that he’ll be able to effectively make it to the potty for puking and possibly pooping, so I’m guessing tomorrow (my birthday!) will be spent cleaning up bodily fluids. Just a hunch though, and I really hope to be proven wrong this time.
Oh well, it could be worse. I can deal with tummy bugs much easier than lung bugs. This too shall pass.