A Weekend Ending in Massive Amounts of Vomit

It was a busy weekend. First and foremost, it was the weekend of the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin festival. This is our fourth time, Norah's third (actually, technically it was her fourth too, but we didn't know she was around the first time). Anyway, I am not sure why we like it so much because it pretty much encompasses everything I hate-traffic, crowds, and corn dogs. But, for $15 you can get your family's picture with a giant, award winning pumpkin. Basically, that's enough for me.

Last year, what should have been a 20 minute drive took over 2 hours. This year we wised up and as soon as we woke up, we headed out. The festival didn't technically start until 9:00 am, but there was a 7:00 pancake breakfast, which we figured Norah would love. We got there around 8:00 am, and I am very proud to say that it took us all of 20 minutes to get there. Plus it was really cold, so by 8:00 am we were already two for two.

Norah found this rubber duck in a bathroom drawer the other day and it hasn't left her side since. I found it in her bed this morning.

My sweet pumpkin.




The line for the pancake breakfast was insane, so we ate pumpkin muffins and drank pumpkin milkshakes instead and walked around listening to the music. There was an awesome band on the main stage who did a lot of Jerry Garcia, CCR, etc. and Norah went nuts. She isn't a huge dancer and doesn't typically like to get down in public, but she got moved by the music, I guess.

We randomly ran into the B-S family. We always seem to run into someone we know at the festival, which is funny because, 1) there are thousands of people there, and 2) we don't know that many people. Norah and Simon were thrilled to see each other and spent the next hour running around, eating hay, and carrying around pumpkins that were clearly part of elaborate displays.



We had to go to soccer practice straight from the festival, which annoyed me because it cut into my HBO time, but it was fun to see what she's been learning. She is terrible at kicking goals-I don't think she likes it because there are too many kids in her way-but she is really into all of the drills. This week the coach used cones which she thought was fabulous.






After all of that excitement she took an awesome 3 hour nap.

Saturday night we had dinner with Grandpa Gene and Ms. Mary where there was both good and bad news. The good news was that the Giants won the first game of the series against the Phillies, and the bad news was that I didn't take a single picture the entire evening.

On Sunday the H and W families came over to watch football and it was a great time. Again, so great that I couldn't be bothered to take a single picture. The H's have two girls-2 and 4, and the W's have a 10 month old boy. It was awesome to watch how sweet and gentle Norah was with Baby Wyatt-she kept hugging and kissing him and asking whose brother he was. Then she got bored and had a much better time playing with the H girls.

Now, Norah typically has 3 meals a day that are very well balanced and healthy. It occupies a lot of my time, effort, and money, but totally worth it. On days like today, however, I relax a bit and let things go with the flow. Over the course of the afternoon Norah had: 3 pieces of a mini Boboli cheese pizza I made; a bowlful of avocado, black bean, corn, and tomato salsa; 4,000 tortilla chips; a bunch of fruit; some jambalaya; and 2 frosted sugar cookies (the H's brought a great sugar cookie kit and the girls got to frost and decorate Halloween cookies).

It was a hectic afternoon so we chillaxed at dinner time and she got to watch an episode of Handy Manny while she ate her scrambled egg, spinach, yogurt, and toast. She wasn't really feeling it, but she needed protein and a vegetable, so she glazed over watching tv and let me shovel dinner into her mouth. We were close to the end and out of nowhere she let out a big, disgusting belch. We laughed, she said excuse me, and then I told her to finish her milk. Imagine my surprise then when she said, 'oh no, mom' and then proceeded to puke a kind of puke I have never, ever, ever seen before in my entire life. It was all pink (the yogurt was strawberry), and no joke, was the entire contents of her stomach from the past 3 days. I had this terrible moment of panic-pink puke was all over her and all over the couch, so I yelled for BVZ and the second he walked in the room she coughed and did it again. I cannot adequately describe how much vomit came out of that little girl's mouth.

Taking a picture of it would have made me a bad mom, so BVZ grabbed her arms and I grabbed her legs and we hosed her off in the tub. This is what the couch looked like after 2 rolls of paper towels and 3 wet bath towels.

We had no idea if the couch covers were washable, but it was either wash them or throw them away so we took our chances (they look fine). I was totally traumatized but Norah was totally fine (which reassures me that she isn't sick-she just had 2 frosted sugar cookies and her system just couldn't handle it). She got a very long bath and then drank some water and had a little bit of applesauce.

I am not going to lie-I was pretty freaked out. I mean, it was a LOT of vomit. I got her pillow and bear and set her up in our bed so I could watch her all night, but to my surprise she insisted that she sleep in her own bed, by herself. I let her do it, but have already checked on her 3 times and probably will force her to sleep with me when she's too sleepy to protest.