Bodily Fluids

I'm writing this post at the tail end (I hope) of what feels like the longest period of sickness in my house. Before kids, I envisioned parenting as a sort of Norman Rockwell painting. Reading books before bedtime, sweet little hands baking with me, and lots of coloring and craft time. The reality definately includes these sweet moments, but truth be told, there are large gaps in between. Those gaps seem to be filled with two things: lots of loud noise, and bodily fluids.

It's amazing the way bodily fluids of the parenting kind seem to fill your life. BC (before children), I watched a girlfriend let her daughter wipe her nose on her jeans because no one had a tissue with horror. Now I sit, covered in various forms of snot wiped on my jeans, rubbed on my shoulder by a tired baby, with the addition of drool, banana, and some other form of spit mixed with food. You see, our house has been ravaged by a cold that just won't die. It started on an apparent field trip home from a preschool friend of Sophia's, and decided that we were the perfect family for it, so it stayed. One by one we have fallen prey to it's cough, it's amazing verosity and talent to produce large quanities of mucus, and alas, it's vomit inducing stomach bug.

I'm no stranger to vomit. I had morning sickness with all three of my kids. The last pregnancy led to no less than 30 weeks of nausea and vomiting. However, there is something to be said for being vomited on by someone else. In your hair, in your hands as you desperately try to catch it before it hits the carpet while simultaneously carrying the vomiting child to the bathroom, wiping vomit out of door hinges (yes, it got in there)... It's amazing because, for the most part, it doesn't bother you. Being a parent has given lots of gifts, aside from strech marks and saggy boobs. It gives you the ability to love without bounds. You know that love it there all the time, but at times like these, when I honestly have lost count at how many times I have been puked on in the last few days, it really fills you in a different ways. BC, if I had to clean up someone else's vomit, I'd be bitter and angry. Now, I am filled with compassion, pity, and impervious to the smell and able to see entire chunks of dinner within without being disgusted.

In addition to those sick-time bodily fluids, there are the other kinds. You know, the every day bodily fluids that starts with the first diaper, and if you have a boy, will continue to fill many conversations until they leave for college. On top of the sickness in my house, bodily fluids continue to fill other parts of my day because I have one baby in diapers, and one just recently potty trained child, which means my thoughts are all about who pooped and peed when, and how quickly I must run to get Maia on the toliet before she forgets she is wearing underwear. It's worth it, even if I do occasionally get peed on.

Ask any mother of a young child, and she will tell you, yes, there are lots of lovely moments sprinkled throughout the day that could rival any pre-baby fantasy of parenting, but all of them will say that those moments are dripping of bodily fluids.