"Carnage"

Fashioning the 'Birthday Breakfast Table' for Dumps Thursday night now feels like a distant memory!

It's nearing midnight and I sit here tentatively typing on my laptop in bed - the baby breathing heavily beside me and the husband on the other side of him also having a troubled sleep.

I am petrified that I have ahead of me a repeat of what occurred last night.  I'm still in shock, still certainly traumatised, and doubtless still reek of the carnage of the past twenty-four hours.  Literally.

But let me back up a notch.  Last I wrote I was frantically preparing for Dumpie's 6th Birthday Party.  As it turned out, I pulled it off - more or less - but just barely (and certainly wouldn't have without the help of my sister 'Auntie Kenz' and her lovely ex-flatmate who came over to help fashion a riot of six little boys into some semblance of a party).

Suffice it to say it was HARDCORE though I did learn a few things about giving a birthday party for little boys which I thought might be helpful in case anyone is interested:

1.  DO NOT host the party in your home if it is a domicile you intend to keep living in after the party (however if moving vans are already parked in the drive and it's your last night before moving into new digs - then go for it - why not!)

2.  DO NOT give water guns as a party favour in the goody bags.

3.  DO NOT start the party serving up all manner of chocolates, treats and sweets on the heavily laden birthday table (ditto filling the 'pass the parcel' game with layers of cadbury's chocolate buttons)

4.  DO NOT allow the children to leave their seats using whatever means necessary during meal and snack time, thereby lessening the likelihood of finding remnants of popcorn, red velvet cake and apple juice smeared in carpets, mirrors and under sofas for days to come.

5.  DO NOT have the party last for more than an hour and a half.  Two and a half hours is just upping the likelihood of you offing yourself after the last messy little guest leaves.

finally...

6.  DO NOT have boys.

At any rate, I've made it through the birthday circuit for another year and Thursday night is but a hellish memory (I was up till 3am fashioning cupcakes and 'letter biscuits') now superseded by what occurred LAST night (sigh).

Thirty-Six (count 'em) Homemade White Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcakes 

I had just turned the lights out and was desperate to pass out given that i'd had but three hours sleep on Thursday night, and same again on Friday night given that the baby had spent from the hours of 2am until 7am projectile vomiting all over himself, me and the bed due to some sort of sudden viral onset.  Nightmare.

Having been relatively okay the rest of the weekend, I wasn't prepared for the sudden burst of what appeared to be enough pancake batter to feed a family of six issue forth from the baby last night.  I lost it.  I wanted to cry.  I cried out to the husband but he wasn't there.  He had alreadybolted to the toilet, dispensing with what sounded like an entire keg of beer being emptied into the bowl with great force.

I started to laugh manically (this is what happens when confronted with double pukage on 'no-hours-sleep' two out of three nights in a row.

Mopping the sick off myself, the baby and our bed proved a hateful task - almost resulting in a sympathetic puke by yours truly, and by that time the husband was back in bed, moaning with nausea and groaning in agony.

Before I could jump in the shower and clean myself off, I heard a great wail from downstairs, which had gone stereo by the time I finally raced into the boys bedroom to find Egg sat upright in his top bunk, projectile vomiting down through the ladder onto a horrified Dumpie who had been awoken by the heavy stream of puke raining down on his hair, face and whole person.

I started laughing like a maniac again.  How could I not?  It was utterly absurd.  The thought that I was stuck in house with everyone compulsively vomiting at the same time was just too much to mentally digest.

I didn't even know who to help first.  I decided that Egg still had some way to go in the vomiting olympics so I grabbed Dumpie out of bed and attempted to calm and change him.  He was of course by this point hysterical and now fully awake - the horror of what had happened hitting him with each new discovery of vomit on his body.  Poor guy.  j

Anyway I shan't bore you with the details.  I'm sure you can imagine how the night went, how I went, how this house currently smells (despite a whole day spent scrubbing, laundering and de-chunking...) and what my current mental state is.

Obviously the husband and children did not - could not - go to work or school today, so I played day nurse and basically devoted myself to the equivalent of cleaning the loos at Glastonbury.  All day.

I cannot say why I am the only one who didn't succumb to this nasty onslaught.

Oh wait a minute - yes I can.  Somebody has to clean up the mess.

The Birthday Boy and the 'Birthday Brudder' pre-pukage onslaught