As I had mentioned in the last post, At-man’s karate dinner was last Saturday night. He was looking forward to it all week and oh how I wish this post was getting ready to go into cute tales of teeny tiny kung fu but it was not meant to be.

Around 5am Saturday morning I awoke to an unusual rumbling in the old tummy. I bolted up to run for the powder room only to find that Hipster D was already there. At-man was wide awake and decided it would be a good time to pretend to shave. My stomach was telling me otherwise. A 30 minute turn at musical bathrooms and D and I were lying on either side of At-man feeling about as bad as you possibly can without any involvement of alcohol. Em woke up briefly but kindly went back to sleep after I went in and explained that it was still dark and mommy didn’t want to contaminate him if we could at all avoid it. We all fell in and out of sleep; stomachs churning until At-man finally woke up and demanded pink milk. You can probably guess from the words “pink milk” and the insinuation of a wide spread stomach virus that giving him this drink will go down on the lifetime list of “unwise parenting decisions”. As he polished off the milk he sat up and looked at me, looked at the bed, and then began to barf all over both me and the bed. Thank god we live on the same street as D’s mom and dad, a quick desperate phone call and they were at the door to fetch Em away from this germ infested house. Sadly enough, the rest of the weekend consisted of barfing, cramping, sweating, and all of the other fun things that go along with gut wrenching pain and discomfort.

I tried to look on the bright side. We didn’t have to run the dishwasher all weekend since nobody could eat any food! Oh yea, we had to run the washing machine a thousand times to get the barf off of everything. We could say that is was a weekend of family bonding. I guess it would be hard to say such a thing when all any of us could say was RALPH! As a matter of fact, at one point Sunday afternoon At-man looked at me and with all the wisdom of a 4 year old he announced we were simply watching too much T.V. and he had concerns about the soda intake as well. They just don’t understand that when you feel like north bound end of a south bound horse all bets are off.

Both the guys were eating pizza again by Sunday night, and though still hugging the commode Monday morning, I was much better by dinner that same night. I have actually lost 6 lbs in the last 4 days which has left me with just enough energy to lie on the couch like a slug and watch endless hours of energetic young athletes fulfill their Olympic dreams. If you know anyone trying to drop a few quick pounds I tell you, this particular virus comes highly recommended. Em came back to us Sunday night and although a bit put off at being thrust out of the house without so much as a good bye I think he has finally forgiven us. Things are finally getting back to normal.

At-man will earn his first belt at kung-fu this week so we will have our own little “karate dinner” to celebrate. It’s his own idea (he’s such a good little sport). I have heard tale of stomach bugs that come in and upturn an entire family, but this was one write of passage I could have done without.