Oh, Baby, The Places You'll Go!: Sometimes You're The Windshield.....

Sometimes you're the windshield and other times you're the bug. This past weekend, I was most definitely the bug! In other words, it wasn't the best weekend in the world. It started off on Thursday afternoon when I left work to pick Matthew up from the ship. Of all the days to forget my cell phone at home, this was not the best one! I called him before I left and told him what time to expect me. Everything was rolling along just fine until I ran into a horrible traffic jam at the bridge tunnel (for no apparent reason!) and then it started raining. Poor Matthew waited outside in the rain for me for almost a half an hour worrying what had become of his absent minded wife and daughter!

When we finally arrived home, I sat down with Ally to feed her a bottle. No sooner had a started when this happened.....

Hello lunch- nice to see you again! All that puke and I'm still smiling! Little did I know what the rest of the weekend had in store....

It wasn't all bad, in fact, there were moments that were downright great! We went to a retirement ceremony for a friend/ neighbor on Friday afternoon, had a Big Love & Lost marathon to get our DVR all cleaned up, made a trip to the mall on Saturday afternoon, ate a yummy BBQ lunch at the famous Doumar's BBQ, and attended the aforementioned friend/neighbor's retirement party on Saturday night. Despite yet another unfortunate projectile vomiting incident, it had all the makings of a great weekend. Until very early Sunday morning when Matthew started feeling sick.

I woke to hear him moaning and groaning next to me shortly after midnight. He said his stomach was really upset. I offered him so Mylanta and silently wished that he'd suck it up so I could get back to sleep. After several more hours of tossing and turning next to my increasingly sick husband, I got up with Ally around 5:30am. As I was feeding her I started to feel an unwelcome rolling in my stomach. I stubbornly ignored it and finished feeding the 'stinker', who decided to live up to her nickname de jour, by royally loading her diaper. While changing this gag-worthy gem, my stomach began to protest much more vocally and before I knew it, I was running to the bathroom with a bare-bottomed baby, slamming the door behind us, and praying to the porcelain god (which Ally thought was hilarious btw!) By 6am I was forced to admit that we had food poisoning. I notified Matthew of my diagnosis and clued him in on my brilliant deductive reasoning skills.

We spent the rest of the day literally laying on the living room floor dozing, moaning & groaning, crying out to God, alternating between burning up and freezing, and trying in vain to entertain Ally in between nap times. It ranks right up there as one of the worst days we've had in a long, long time and it was definitely a terrible day to be a toilet bowl at the Martin household! Monday we still weren't feeling well so we both called in sick from work and spent another day recuperating. We finally had a meal (our first in over 36 hours) on Monday night and are feeling back to our normal chipper selves by now.

One really fun thing happened in the midst of all this ickiness though... but first... some background... During feeding time, Ally needs to be entertained with songs and silly antics to distract her from gagging on her food and throwing up. One of my favorite little dittys is:

"Five Little Monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head! Mommy called the doctor and the doctor said, "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

When I say this last little bit, I shake my finger at Ally. Last week she started shaking her finger back at me as soon as I started singing the song! So cute! Back to Sunday evening- I'm feeding her as I'm laying across our dining room table feeling sorry for myself and trying not to gag at the sight and smell of baby food and induce more dry heaving. I've exhausted all of my normal verses of "Old MacDonald had a farm" a.k.a "Ally MacMartin had a farm.." so I sing "Ally MacMartin had a farm, E-I-E-I-O, and on her farm she had a monkey...." you guess it... she started wagging her finger at me! Different song, different tune, but she now associates the word monkey with shaking her finger at me! What a smart little gal. She also demonstrated a few other fun tricks last weekend- when asked, she can now point to her nose and ears, and sometimes her eyes. We're so proud of all of her 'accomplishments'!

Here's a few pictures taken over the past few days: