“Stomach bugs are no fun at all.”

“Stomach bugs are no fun at all,” my blog pal Nancy commented on my last entry, and in offering this observation she revealed her unique gift for understatement. New to my blog? Here, let me catch you up on the FUN that’s been happening in our house recently:

LAST WEEKEND: I overindulged, including an evening where I was out partying with the girls while the husband was at home, busily changing puked-upon sheets. TWICE.

MONDAY: I endured my hour-long commute, and upon finally entering my office, emptied the contents of my stomach into my trash can. I retreated home via the same insulting commute, booted again, admitted defeat, went to bed.

MONDAY NIGHT: Middle son got it, and then lost it, all over the hallway carpet.

There, now the new readers are all caught up, and all six of my current readers are probably thinking, thank gawd, she’s done with this ridiculous topic. But they would be wrong!

By last evening, we were hopeful that perhaps the worst was behind us. Everyone tucked happily into bed, but no one more so than the husband and me. But then we heard it:

“Daddy! Dad-dy!! DAAAAA-DEEEEEEEE!!!!”

It was the three-year-old calling out to his favorite parent. With a hard shove gentle nudge I urged him to respond to his summons. The next thing I see is Dad zipping past the bedroom door, holding the boy at arms length, heading straight for the bathroom. The kid was TOXIC, and he was dripping, too. An enormous poop, the likes of which we have never seen since we started the parenting thing in 1996, had issued forth from his sweet little bottom, and the understated Nancy would surely agree that it smelled kinda bad.

Dad began hosing off the boy and suggested I take a look at the bed. Oh, my, the bed! The Pull-up was no match for this explosive poo, and rather than use hyperbole as a device here, let’s go with understatement a la Nancy and just say that a little bit had gotten on the sheets. I donned plastic gloves and set to cleaning up that foulness. Meanwhile, Daddy finished decontaminating the child, placed him in snuggly jammies, and plopped him onto our bed while we finished our work in his bedroom. And while we were in there, we heard this:

“Daddy! Dad-dy!! DAAAAA-DEEEEEEEE!!!!”

“What, buddy?”

“I FREW UP!”

OH NO HE DI’INT! Oh. Yes. He. Did. He frew up all over our clean bed. The same bed that he frew up on last Friday night. The husband observed that, in fact, the only thing different about tonight from last Friday was the fact that I was there to help.

Experienced parents know the rest: We started laundry, disinfected the bathroom, aired out the boy’s room, remade both beds, threw away a couple of unsalvageable pillows, and blah blah blah, when is she going to finish this interminable tale?

Soon, but first I must share the oddest part of the whole evening. Anyone who has ever been through this knows that it’s one of parenthood’s more revolting responsibilities. Even the strongest-stomached parents will get that throw-uppy taste in their mouth when challenged with such vile odors and textures. But, apparently, not the husband! because he? He decided that now’s a good time for a snack, and as I fell, exhausted, back into my clean sheets at midnight, he was standing in the kitchen, munching on cheese and crackers, I guess because nothing says “I just cleaned up some pretty gross stuff from both ends of my child’s body” like ingesting exactly what my kid just regurgitated all over my bed.

Ew.

One last thing. My sincere apologies to my readers who took me at my word when I promised I would never write about my kids’ poop again. But NOW I’m done. Seriously. I swear.