>Proof the Holidays are Finally Here!

>I was right on the blissful verge of unconsciousness when the baby monitor began shaking on my nightstand. From it blared the unmistakable sounds of Bruiser, launching into yet another coughing fit. Only this time, the sound was… different.

“Oh hell,” I muttered, leaping from my bed and running for his room. Inside, Bruiser sat in his crib, looking forlorn. He coughed again and another strange gurgling sound erupted from deep inside him. I picked him up, grabbed his blanket, and began trying to tuck it around his body like an oversized bib. But I wasn’t quite fast enough.

Bruiser opened his mouth and projectile vomited right into my face, covering both of us in halfway-digested milk. For a moment, we both stared at each other in bleary-eyed shock. Then Bruiser opened his mouth again.

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” he screamed. I ran with him for the door.

“WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”

I carried him into our bathroom and stripped him down to his diaper, then grabbed a towel, wet it, and began trying to clean him off- which wasn’t very effective, since I had as much puke on me as he did. I paused and looked at myself in the mirror. In addition to my sopping wet shirt, my hair was matted with upchuck. I shuddered and took off my shirt. Bruiser kept screaming.

“Hold on, Bruiser,” I muttered in the most soothing tones I could muster, trying to wipe off the puke. “Just. Hold. On.” In response, his screams grew louder.

Motherhood really rocks sometimes, doesn’t it?

Now the magazines and Martha Stewart would have you believe that the holiday season is ushered in with stocking-shaped cookies, the familiar strains of Christmas music and Rudolph on TV.

But for parents of young children, the real harbinger of the holidays is far less pleasant.

It’s barf.

The first real illness of the season inevitably comes somewhere around Thanksgiving. If it’s not a chest cold, it’s a stomach virus. Or the rotavirus. Or the dreaded hantavirus (Okay, okay, no reports of hantavirus around here yet, but that one totally creeps me out).

Whatever the cause, the effect is that I find myself staring into the bathroom mirror at some ungodly hour and quietly assessing the vomit tangled in my hair. To me, that just screams SANTA WILL BE HERE BEFORE YOU KNOW IT!!

The epilogue to this fetid tale occured somewhere around 8:30 am the next morning on the elliptical at the YMCA, when I lifted my arm to wipe the sweat from my face and realized very quickly that I had missed a spot during my half-conscious sponge bath the night before.

Ewwwww.

Last night, Bruiser wasn’t any better; his cough woke him every hour or so. At one point, I put him in bed with us. Conveniently, he chose that moment to empty the contents of his stomach. We tried to get up the puke as well as we could, but all night long, we kept waking to find chunks of partially digested bologna under our pillows and tangled in the sheets.

I guess in our case, it’s true that there’s no place like home for the holidays.

Provided there’s plenty of Lysol and hand sanitizer in stock.