Nothing Kills the Holiday Spirit Like Projectile Vomit All Over Your New Rudolph Slippers

Yes, you read that correctly.

We went to dinner Thursday night to celebrate Morgan and Ally both getting 4.0 grades this last term. Hal and I promised we would do something fun, so we ended up eating dinner in a Chinese restaurant.

The food tasted a little "off" to me, so I mainly ate the one thing that tasted fine.

I sent Ally and Austin home with Hal, since we had driven separately, and Morgan and I hurried and did a little more Christmas shopping. We got home a while later and everything seemed fine.

Later, the girls went to bed and Hal and Austin watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer together. After that they started playing with the slippers and chasing each other around. Around 9:30 or so Austin started saying his stomach was hurting.

I asked, as I ALWAYS do when a kid says their stomach hurts, if he thought he might throw up. He didn't think so.

All of a sudden he got frantic, saying "MY STOMACH HURTS!"

Hal started telling him something, like "Get to bed." or some other thing, but I, noticing the urgency in Austin's voice, yelled to Hal to get Austin a pan IMMEDIATELY and to "MOVE THE SLIPPERS!" (I am a very practical mother.)

(I'm sorry if this is too graphic for readers who are squeamish. You might want to stop reading here.)

All of a sudden a stream of vomit, like I've only seen once before in my fifteen plus years of raising children, erupted from his mouth and shot across the dining room and all over and even INSIDE the Rudolph slippers that Austin was holding. It was not a happy moment for any one of us.

It was one of those situations where you just don't even know where to start cleaning things up. Austin himself was pretty clean, seeing as the vomit shot out away from him and ended at the slippers in his outstretched hands. Thankfully none of it seemed to get on the area rug under the table. Mostly it just landed across and to the side of all the bar stools in a pretty straight line. It was kind of like a dragon breathing fire. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself.

Ok, I'll stop with the descriptions now. I'm making myself feel sick all over again.

We got him a pan then, which was a good thing because he made good use of it.

Anyway, I finally got him to the bathroom and into some pajamas and into his little bed on my floor, complete with clean bath mats and a clean pan. Then I had the marvelous task of cleaning up the "surface wash only" slippers. I must say once again, we Fronks are nothing if not thorough, at least when it comes to making messes. It was a most unpleasant task. I went over them again this morning to make sure I didn't miss any spots. I'm still trying to find my can of Lysol to finish the task to my satisfaction.

Friday morning Austin woke up feeling fine, so I'm sure it was the Chinese food.

Next time I think we'll celebrate by going to a movie.