A Mother's Love

There's a bit of a running joke in my family that "true love" means being willing to hold your bare hands out and catch your child's vomit without a second thought.

I know, we have a strange sense of humor.  But if that is the true measure of a mother's love, I must love Graham a whole lot.  A whole lot.  And Graham must love me somewhere around a pint and a half.

I probably had it coming-- it was just over a week ago when I complained about having to keep Cael home from school when it was clear he wasn't really sick.  I probably shouldn't have been surprised when, while over at my sister's house for dinner, Graham ate a full meal, played with toys on her floor, and then promptly scrambled up onto our laps and drenched us from top to bottom with the contents of his stomach.

If you've been with me from the beginning of this blog, you may remember that Graham has a history of making me his personal sick bag.  Back in 2011, Graham enjoyed his first movie with a few too many bags of fun-sized M&Ms, and in the darkness of the theater, my only clue that something had happened was his quiet cough and something warm on my chest.

Last Wednesday's incident was like that in, well, pretty much no way.  Over the course of 15 seconds, Graham transformed from a Beyblade-weilding Pokémon master to a pork cutlet geyser.

Sorry for that visual.

But I love Graham, so I did what a mother does when she loves her son-- I held out my hands when it was clear he was going to be sick.  Unfortunately for me, this was no fun-sized explosion, and it just kept coming.  All over me, my sister, the sofa where we sat, the table, the rug, the floor.

For the next 45 minutes as I helped to clean up Graham's mess and ignore my own wet clothes, I could think of little other than trying to contain the the spread of whatever germs had colonized Graham.  Unfortunately, his demonstration was not our last medical setback for the week, as Adler caught both the digestive bug and a nasty respiratory virus which forced us into the ER after midnight and only allowed me 2.5 hours of sleep before having to wake up and dispense oatmeal like any regular day.

As exhausted as I was, even insomnia seemed preferable to becoming the official throw-up catcher.  In fact, I could think of about a million other ways I'd rather demonstrate my love.  If one's willingness to do something unpleasant without reservation is the best indicator of parental love, I would now like to petition to the "powers that be" that any of the following become the new standard:

- Watching and reporting on all episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba
- Allowing my children to feast on nothing but processed hot dogs and doughnuts for a week (although that may lead to the vomit hand-cupping after all)
- Playing Monopoly without cheating to make the game end faster
- No longer prohibiting the mixing of contrasting Play-Doh colors
- Pretending to think farts are funny

Now that's love.  I'm off to shower...