The Church of Ralph!

The last 18 hours have been more eventful than normal.

It all started at 1 am on Friday night. Tim came and told us that he (peeed?, peed?, pee’d?, pee’ed? screw it...) wet himself so Andrea got up to check on him. This was a little weird as he still wears a diaper at nights and he has never done this before. A minute later Andrea asks for help as she has discovered that ,while he is dry as a bone, he has vomited on every surface of his bed. Andrea and Scott then get to clean everything up. By 1:20 we all go back to bed and everything is ok.

At 1:30 Jason comes and scares the crap out of me by RUNNING up to the bed and yelling “I can’t sleep!”. By my addled reasoning I am being attacked by a madman in my own house and I just manage to not reach out and squish him before I realize who it actually is. I mutter threats at him to keep trying and he goes back to bed.

Now I am on an adrenaline high, so I get to lie awake in bed for 30 minutes. At 2 am I am finally drifting off again which is Tim’s cue to start puking everywhere again. Andrea is snoring so I just get up and clean everything up again. I go back to bed but within minutes I hear Tim coughing so I get back up and get him a drink and take him potty.

At 2:40 his internal timer has indicated that dad is about to fall asleep and it is time to puke AGAIN!!!!

Once again, I get him cleaned up but now I am running out of blankets, sheets, pillows, teddy bears and sanity so I go and start a load of laundry and find something I can use as a sheet. In the laundry room I discover that the dryer and the washer are both full and we have no empty laundry baskets. I manage to jury rig one and I am able to empty both. I start to fill the washer with all the vomit covered clothing and bedding and discover that Andrea has simply balled up the first sheet with all the puke chunks still in it to clean up the next day. I discover this by lifting it and opening it up and dropping puke chunks all over my feet. Now I have to clean up the laundry room too.

Finally I finish in the laundry room and go to wash the residue off my feet when I realize that I hadn’t actually finished with Tim!

Returning to the room, I find him sitting calmly on Jason’s bed where I put him 15 minutes ago. He is shivering because I still haven’t put any new PJ’s on him and he is very grateful to see me. I get him warmed up and then deal with Jason who insists that if Tim is sick so is he. Jason gets a bucket by his bed because he is a big boy and can puke in it instead of on himself. He thinks this is a good plan and decides that since Tim no longer has a clean pillow then he won’t use one either. This may have been a magnanimous gesture of love and understanding for his brother but it is 3:15am and I still haven’t slept so I just think he is nuts but I ignore it and go back to bed because sleep sounds better than trying to fix my obviously broken son.

My bed feels so good.....why am I uncomfortable?....CRAP!....I get right back out of bed because I never did clean the vomit residue off my feet from the laundry room accident.

At 3:30 Jason come screaming into the room and tells me that Tim has to pee. I go see Tim who looks confused but willingly goes and sits on the potty and DOES NOTHING. After putting him back to bed I have a short “discussion” with Jason and he decides that it is time for him to go to sleep and stop worrying about Tim. I may have voiced some more severe threats than were really needed in this situation.

I finally get to sleep at about 4 am but even then I dream of puke. In my dreams the kids are yelling again and I am trying to wake up but keep deciding that they can deal with it on their own. Finally Andrea goes to clean everything up and doesn’t ask for held so I keep dreaming happily. Dream Andrea is so awesome. I slept late in the morning.

When I finally got up, I found the sheets I put on Tim's bed at 3 am gone and a towel on the bare mattress instead of a sheet along with another new blanket that I know I hadn't given to Tim. Andrea then informs me that he threw up again at about 4:30 and all I did was mumble so she went and cleaned it up. Apparently I did manage to tell her that I started the laundry but she just used the towel because everything was still wet.

Today was much better. The boys were tired but no one was throwing up so everything was all roses. We even went to church!...

…Jason threw up in the truck as we pulled into the church parking lot.

Now we are home, the kids are clean and we are doing wash again. Tomorrow, I get to try to clean the truck. Right now it smells like the underside of a diseased yak. Church was great for the 30 seconds we were there finding things to wipe Jason up.

Ahh! The church of Ralph, How great thou art!