"Not in the produce section!"

Poor Pookie has suffered through a rite of passage today.

Late Sunday night I woke up with terrible stomach cramps, cold sweat, the whole nine yards. I stayed home and was sick all day Monday…quite an adventure with three small demanding ankle biters. It took me about two hours to make breakfast! Anyway, this morning around 4:45, while I was putting my contacts in, I heard the unmistakable and always unwelcome sound of vomit splattering on the bed sheets. Eww!

At first I thought it was Beanie, who has been known to cough so much she spits up nasty lung products. But then the smell hit me and I knew that this was just good old fashioned throw up. When I opened the door to the bedroom, there was poor Pookie, long hair in her face and full of vomit, saying “Mommaaaaaa!”

For a variety of reasons and mostly because of the unexpected illness, we had to go to the grocery store later in the day. Like most kids her age, Pookie recovered almost completely in between bouts of vomiting. She was riding in the front seat of the shopping cart, and we were in the produce section buying our last few items, when she turned the color of cauliflower and began to whimper. I asked her if she needed to go to the bathroom and throw up and she said, very worriedly, "Uh-huh!" We high-tailed it to the bathroom. Just as we got to the door she really began to whine. I whisked her out of the cart with one arm (holding Bitty in the other because we had left his shoes at home), Beanie pushed the door open, and we raced into a stall…just in time! Pookie bravely held her little mouth closed until her bare feet touched the filthy floor and then she let it out...