Road Trip

Before I start this post, I was inspired by a friend who blogs and has stopped referring to her husband as "my husband" and calls him MM. I also find writing my husband ever time to be long and unnecessary, especially when his name is shorter than the word husband! Since I post pictures and my name is on this blog, I will call him by his first name from now on (Chris). Besides the fact that pretty much all the readers know his name anyway.

OK, now that that's out of way :) Let's discuss the road trip we all took this past weekend. We decided to go to an alumni picnic up in Pittsburgh so Chris could see some of his old college friends and show off his cute HMB (and me?). We planned on making it just a one night trip, leaving Saturday morning and coming back early Sunday morning. Friday morning, HMB was sitting on the couch, before his nap, but after playing at the gym daycare, and puked all over. He had chugged some milk earlier that morning so needless to say, the puke was pretty gross. We changed clothes and HMB had a quick bath before he napped.

Do I freak out yet? This was his first bad vomiting session but it was all milk so it definitely could have been that the milk didn't agree with him, right? Also, the day before we had been running errands and HMB had been in and out of potentially germ-infested shopping carts and at least one public bathroom. So maybe he had a little bug? After the nap, HMB seemed to be completely fine. I stuck him in the jogging stroller and we walked over to a Happy Hour with my former co-workers. He happily played, ate a waffle fry dipped in ketchup and caressed the waitresses leg when she came over to clear some glasses from our table.

Fast forward to Friday night, another puking session. HMB didn't get a bath this time, I was so tired I tossed all of our clothes into the tub, toweled us both off, and back to sleep we went. HMB woke up happy as could be. Do we still go to Pittsburgh? HMB is so happy and he would have so much fun playing, and he seems to be all right except for the puking? Chris and I decided that he was OK and we could still go.

About an hour or so into the trip, HMB throws up again, in the car this time. Fortunately, by some miracle, he mostly puked to his right side, so clean up (with all the wipes I had with me) wasn't too bad. We stripped him down and put a new outfit on him and he was running around the parking lot in no time. We called my mom, and Chris' mom, for some guidance on what to do. Chris' mom decided that he didn't have the flu since he wasn't feverish or even really crabby. Do we go on to the picnic or turn around? Again, we decided that HMB would have a lot of fun playing at the picnic and he was fine otherwise, full of energy, strangely enough. So we stayed our course.

We made it to the picnic without any more vomiting and HMB was actually great on the car ride. He took an hour nap and woke up with a smile. As we thought, HMB was in heaven at the picnic. He played in the water with the big kids (prompting another outfit change), ran around the jungle gym/playground and overall had a great time. Chris and I had decided to drive home that same night (about 4 hours) for a couple of reasons - one being we were supposed to stay with a friend who has a 5 month old baby and we did not want to get him sick! We also thought HMB would be better in his own bed in case something did happen, even though puke did not make an appearance at the picnic, thank goodness!

As we said out good-byes and headed over to the car, we noticed something peculiar about the left rear tire. It was flat. I must quickly tell you all about my tire karma. It's bad. I must have done something to tires in a past life because they don't like me. I once had every single tire go flat in one car, all within about a month. When I turned in my last car (the lease was up), I drove Chris' Jeep Wrangler. He had the Jeep for 6 years with no flats. I had the car a month and had a flat (those suckers are HARD to change). I drove Chris' beloved Volvo C70 to my first mom's night out after HMB was born. As soon as I pulled into this amazing parallel space in DC, I heard the sssssss sound. Really? Tire karma is getting me on mom's night??

Anyway, needless to say I have had a lot of experience changing flat tires. I once changed a flat in front of a client when I was doing home-based therapy, in SE DC. It was actually very good for our therapeutic relationship after she saw I was sort of a tire changing bad ass. And although I had not had to change the tire on this car (Ford Escape SUV), I had a bunch of big, strong men to help me out (and the directions on how to do it).

We got the tire changed but realized it was way to late to get it fixed anywhere. The friends we were supposed to stay with told us it was fine to stay with them, especially since HMB hadn't had an incident all day. So we stopped at a SuperWalmart for some food and headed to their place. HMB was asleep as soon as he hit the bed and seemed to be doing all right. At about 1am, I woke up to see HMB writhing around on the bed next to me (Chris was sleeping downstairs on the couch). I was hoping and praying this was not a precursor to some puking. My hopes and prayers were not answered and HMB puked all over the comforter. He didn't seem to be any calmer and I was worried there was more left to come out. I wrapped him in a towel and took him downstairs to get help from Chris. While standing on the hardwood floor, HMB let it all out. Then he was fine, laughing and playing with his dad while I did some major cleaning. HMB and I also took a bath and went back to sleep.

Sadly, this was not the end of the vomiting for the night. However, this time I was prepared!! I had a towel with me and as HMB woke up whimpering at about 4am, I held him and armed myself with the towel. ALL the puke went into the towel! HMB went right back to sleep, I rinsed out the towel, and we all slept until 7:30am.

After some strong coffee and lots of apologizing (our friends were completely fine with everything), we headed to a Pep Boys and got our car flat fixed (there was some metal in the tire). HMB was in a good mood, even eating some crackers and fruit for breakfast. The car ride home was uneventful except for some traffic that made us late for our softball game. And NO PUKING! Let me mention here that we were out of clean outfits for HMB and down to one clean pair of pajamas. Thank goodness for that SuperWalmart, I bought HMB a new pair of shorts and shirt. Even though I couldn't wash them before he wore them, I decided this was better than him going around naked or in long sleeved (but very cute) pajamas in 90 degree weather.

The past couple nights have been rough, I don't know if at night, HMB still isn't feeling well? But he has been an eating machine the past two days so I know he HMB is definitely feeling a lot better overall. We survived our rough weekend and even though I know there will be more, it's nice to get that first one out of the way!