The plague descends on our household once more

Good lord- once again Ella came down with a stomach flu and spent the hours between 10:30 last night and 3 am alternating between a coma like sleep and a surprisingly accurate re-enactment of The Exorcist. Poor B will never learn and for the umpteenth time managed to position himself right in the line of fire. How does the man do it? One of these days he will surely realize that it is far more intelligent to go for the bucket first, baby second. He gets it backwards, every single time, and ends up having to stand in front of her, catching vomit in his bare hands, unable to even move for fear of spreading the mess. Great Dad, just no sense of self-preservation. And not only does he not care about getting covered in puke (or atleast, not enough to avoid it), but he spent the night sleeping on the floor next to her bed so that he could be close to her if she got sick again. I tried to get Ella to come sleep in our room but she didn't want to and B volunteered to just stay with her. How sweet was that?

I was nearly convinced that it was the gastro once again but I was thinking about it and I wonder if she didn't get sick from the green grapes that she ate yesterday at playgroup. Can't you get salmonella or something from unwashed fruit and veg? I suppose it doesn't really matter now since she seems to be on the road to recovery but it does make me wonder a bit.

The most disturbing thing wasn't the amount of vomiting that she did, although it was prodigious. She dirtied nearly every single sheet and blanket that I own, and today was a steady round of washing, drying, ironing, and folding. Always fun, but even more so when you are managing on 5 hours of sleep.

The most disturbing thing was not the way the pasta that she had had for dinner turned to paste and stuck to the fabric of her pyjamas and the sheets, requiring a thorough scrub before it could be thrown in the washing machine and thereby working its way under all my nails so that I couldn't even enjoy a relaxing half hour in front of the tele without gagging from the stench of my own hands.

No, the most disturbing thing was the enormous chunks of food that came up. It was quite clear that her last meal consisted of green grapes and tortellini pasta, washed down with a bit of milk because squished into her sheets and piled up at the bottom of her bucket were halved grapes and slightly gnawed tortellini (and large chunks of curdled milk, ugh). Ella apparently eats like a starved wolfhound. It was quite clear that she had barely chewed any of her food, which I hadn't noticed while I was eating with her. I don't know what is more shocking- that she doesn't chew or that she managed to get those enormous chunks of food back up her esophogus?