It started off as such a nice idea for a Wednesday. I suggested to Jay that he and the kids meet me for lunch at a nice Italian restaurant that a colleague had recommended. We agree to meet at 2, a typical Spanish lunch time. I arrived first, and although the weather looked somewhat ominous, it wasn't raining yet.
A few minutes later Jay and the kids arrive, with Lanna sleeping peacefully in the stroller. Unfortunately, the restaurant was down in the cellar. So I took Lanna out of the stroller and carried her downstairs as she was waking up. Fatal mistake 1.
The waitress showed us to a nice table, and just as I was sitting down, Lanna threw up all over me. Well, mostly on my shirt and on her shirt, but it was enough. I was too shocked too do anything more than hold her away from me as she threw up again. Apparently she had had milk and grapes prior to coming to the restaurant.
If I had been the waitress, I would have swiftly showed our family the door. But this woman was incredibly kind. She brought extra napkins, both to the table and to the women's bathroom as I tried to clean us both up. She even entertained Lanna while I tried to figure out what to do with my shirt. I wiped it off, but the smell was still overpowering. I had a full spare change of clothes for Lanna in the diaper bag, but alas I was left with trying to form a shirt-like structure out of a cardigan.
It was rough, but something that becomes a funny memory and a good story. But then it got worse.
Friday afternoon, we went with my colleague Andres and his family to the Madrid zoo. The attractions were elephants (including a baby) and pandas, neither of which we have in Philadelphia. We also don't have a raccoon in the zoo, although they do patrol our neighborhood after dark. Anyway, the afternoon was lovely except that Sammy started complaining that his stomach hurt. I wasn't too worried, even though he refused a generous popcorn offer from Andres' daughter, because Joey's general "I'm tired" statement is always that his stomach hurts. In fact, he sometimes informs us that his stomach has been hurting since January.
After the zoo, we drove back home and Jay put Sammy right to bed. Jay himself went right to bed, since he also said he was not feeling well. I fed Joey dinner (Fatal Mistake 2) and put him and Lanna to bed. I then sat down to do some work.
Around 11:30 PM, I heard Sammy crying and went in to see him. After a few minutes of comforting, he threw up partly on his bed and partly on himself and partly on the floor (but not on me!). It was a rough hour or so, with trying to clean everything up while trying to prevent Sammy from becoming hysterical. But he only threw up one more time and then Jay was feeling well enough to bring Sammy into our bed (near the edge) and rest.
As we left the room, I looked over at Joey and said, "Thank goodness he is okay." I barely made it back into our bedroom when I heard Joey crying that he threw up. And since he ate dinner, his was a doozy. It tested the limits of our tiny washing machine. Poor Joey really got the worst of it. I slept next to him and he did an amazing job of getting the results of all the other episodes into a bucket.
I spent the next day in fear, as no illness has ever left me untouched. By evening I was still feeling fine. By 2 AM, not so much. Although it was no fun, I was grateful that at least we weren't all sick at the same time. That would have been impossible.
Hopefully that's the worst illness to hit us this trip! We've seen a few scraped knees and bonked heads, but our only other major injury so far was earlier in the week when Joey fell out of bed and go a black eye. We're not sure how he did it... but since then we moved his mattress to the floor.
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