Last night at dinner, Dash ate a big bowl of yogurt and pineapple, and then I gave him a few little slivers of cucumber to try for the first time. He apparently does not care for cucumber if the projectile vomiting of all the aforementioned yogurt is any indication. He made his point clear with two rounds of puke in quick succession. We abandoned dinner, put him in the bath, and then put him down to bed. I spent the next 45 minutes cleaning up, doing laundry (thank you, sanitize cycle!), and worrying constantly that our entire family was about to be stricken with a stomach bug. My dislike of vomit is legendary in my family. As a child, I would barricade myself in my room for days if anyone in the family had any sort of GI symptoms. I'm not much better as a grown-up except that I realize I cannot use the barricade myself when one of my children is sick. After 45 minutes in his bed, Dash started crying; this isn't totally unusual but I was convinced this meant he really was sick. I went in to his room and just held him in the glider until he fell asleep. Other than being worried about breathing in his germs (which is really just ridiculous. I'd probably already kissed him 40 times that day on the mouth), it was very sweet and peaceful to just sit and rock with him while he went back to sleep. He's getting so big that I know these times to hold him like a baby are dwindling quickly.
When I finally got in bed later last night, exhausted after a busy weekend and exhausted just thinking about the busy week ahead, I found that I couldn't sleep. I hovered over Dash's monitor trying to decide if the shadows on the video were the print on his crib sheet or new splatters of vomit. I listened to every sound from his room to try to determine if he was coughing, getting sick, in distress in any way. I was awake until the wee hours of the morning worried that he might be getting sick. Was this productive in any way? No. If he's sick, he'll let me know and I'll wake up. And if he's not, getting some sleep wouldn't hurt me. This is one of those ways that I parent that I'd really like to change. The needless worry over things that I can't change and really, in the greater scheme of things, just aren't that big of a deal. Maybe someday I'll be able to stop the ridiculousness. Until then, wow, am I tired this morning.
