Stomach bug, 2. Me, 0.

...aaaand now the baby's sick. Fuck fuckity fuck fuck.

It's been a rough week, people. Yesterday we had B's three year checkup at 3 and I felt so lousy and nauseated I decided to just drive the kids around all day until then because I just couldn't do anything else, and so I did. We go home for lunch and diaper changes, then pile back in for the appointment, go through all the rigmarole of navigating the giant and packed parking lot, multiple elevators and stairs and hallways and lines, only to be told they have no record of my appointment and nobody else is available for the rest of the day so we'll just have to come back tomorrow. Oh perfect.

Went in this morning only to have Bobby throw a crying, screaming, flopping on the floor fit when we tried to get him to stand against the wall to be measured, or even worse, stand on the scale. He did this at his two year appointment, too. I don't understand it; nothing would calm him down, and I had been talking to him about this for days explaining what was going to happen and he had sounded very enthusiastic about it. It's so weird. The entirely unsympathetic nurse just sighed an exasperated sigh and said, "well, we have to be able to measure him!" And...what?

The doctor saw him and was *sort of* able to look in his ears and listen to his heart, but we have no growth chart, so really the whole traumatic thing was an utter waste of time. But, I couldn't not bring him because then I'd just be shitty and negligent. Luckily he didn't need shots or blood tests today. And we have his first ever dental appointment on Tuesday that I'm sure will be the same screaming mess and utter waste of time. Sigh.

Then when I got B to school, and bought a carload of groceries because we'd been living on scraps for days, Theo was kind of cranky and refusing to eat anything all day. Just as I was pulling up to pick up B at school, Theo projectile vomited what seemed like ten gallons of crap all over himself and the car. It just kept going and going. So, that explained why so fussy all day. Then I had to drag his slimy, pukey mess out of the car to get B at school, and of course they were running late and I had to stand there for fifteen minutes with my soaked, miserable, and foul-smelling baby while Bobby had his last snack of the day and ate it with the tiniest little bites imaginable, and I weighed the consequences of leaving a puking baby with a sitter while I went to my singing gig tonight.

I decided it was not worth it nor fair to the sitter nor advisable to leave Theo (and probably now Bobby) sick at home without me, and so canceled everything. Don't know if I will have to cancel tomorrow night's gig, too, or the eighty-year-old's birthday party I committed to going to Sunday or the mom's night out that night, too. And of course I have zero plans any other weekend but this one. Of course.

I spent the evening letting Bobby eat cup after cup of strawberry yogurt for dinner because I just couldn't be buggered, while I painstakingly dismantled Theo's car seat so I could clean the puke that had invaded every single part of it. Everything had to be soaked and scrubbed and put in the washing machine. I don't have the faintest idea how to put all the pieces back together. 

Now I'm waiting for Bobby to start throwing up all over his room. Oh, it's going to happen. No use trying to pretend it won't.

And I still feel like crap, nearly a week later. This bug has been the worst I've ever had. I'm officially in hell. 

It really makes me feel like all those times I threw up when I was a kid, it must have been just normal childhood illnesses, not that I was "sensitive" or "upset" or whatever other excuse my mother made. Having zero understanding of germ theory or how the body or illness works, it makes sense that what I experienced was normal and part of childhood. Everyone I know now, it seems, goes through this several times a year. This is just going to be my lot for a while. It makes me so angry that anyone, myself and my kids included, have to accept this kind of disruption to our lives and abject misery weeks out of every year. But I guess it could be so much worse - life is for most people in the world. Ugh.