Puke-cation

Our Thanksgiving trip to my mom’s house both began and ended in puke. That’s right, folks. Good old upchuck.

About an hour into our five hour drive to Mt. Shasta, Josephine said to me, “Get me out, Mama.” Taylor and I both sternly told her that we had a lot of driving to do and that she was going to have to sit tight. She responded by looking at me and throwing up. Yogurt and oatmeal…all over herself, her car seat, her blanket…just about everywhere.

Now, in high school I took a child development class. We had to tote around a mechanical baby that would cry at various times during the day and night. You would put a key in it’s back and hold it there until it was done crying. This was supposed to show young women how daunting caring for a child could be, henceforth, scaring them out of having a baby in high school. Other schools had students carry around eggs as babies, or sacks of flour. I, for one, had a fun time dressing my doll up, got to have a babysitter while I went to swim practice (you can’t leave a baby by the pool, after all), and figured out how to sleep while holding the key in it’s back. In essence, it was not too daunting for me. I didn’t get pregnant in my teens, however, I wasn’t really at risk to begin with.

I propose a new program. All at risk teens should be forced to clean child puke from a car seat. This disgusting, unsavory, wretched activity will surely be enough to deter every single one of them from unprotected sex for the rest of their lives. Seriously. Do you think I could get a grant for that program? Most disgusting thing I have had to do as a mother, hands down. And I didn’t even have to clean up the pools of vomit. Taylor took on that task (Hallelujah!) while I cleaned Josephine off in an unsuspecting Burger King bathroom. Additionally, my job was to clean the cover, straps and plastic part of the seat when we got to our destination. And the Velcro on the straps? Forget about it. This was so, so nasty. I had no idea how many crevices, caves, and cracks are in the plastic car seat. I will spare you the details, but really, there should be someone you could pay to do that for you. Or maybe parents can just sign up for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (which I would call P.U.K.E.S. – which stands for Proving Upchuck Kills Early Sex) and you can call over a high school student to come clean the puke off for you. This is sounding better and better the more I think about it…

So there was the start of our trip. Needless to say, I was worried about the trip back, however, Josephine’s food all stayed inside of her. When we arrived home after our uneventful, even pleasant five hour drive home, we were greeted with cat puke on our bedroom floor in not just one, but three places. Taylor was dismayed, but really, after cleaning up toddler puke from car seat crevices and Velcro strips, I happily cleaned up the cat puke. Even exclaiming about how pleasant cat puke smells. Just like wet cat food, really. Nothing like a toddler to put it all in perspective.