Big Hiccups

You guys. My Favorite Toddler spent the night at my house on Friday and it was SO MUCH FUN!!! I want to do it again, and again, and again.

The plan was to pick him up after work on Friday and head to my cousin’s basketball game about an hour away, but since Minnesota has decided to SNOW EVERY DAY this winter, we changed our plans because of the awful traffic. Instead we headed straight to McDonald’s and had a fun time at the Play Place. Then we went to my house and played on the drums, played piano, played “Ka-chow” (the name of a car from the movie Cars), and played hide-and-seek. In the middle of a game of hide-and-seek/Ka-chow, Favorite Toddler came out of the bathroom (where he had been “hiding”) and said, “I had a BIG hiccup!”

In his toddler mind, “big hiccup” = throw up. And it was big. The poor buddy had puke down his shirt, and there was a big pile in the bathroom, as well as a trail down the hall where he had run to tell me about his big hiccup. You may be aware that I have the strongest gag reflex in the history of the world, so of course I gagged REALLY hard at the smell. Then I started laughing because I knew that I was going to have the hardest time cleaning it up. I pulled off Favorite Toddler’s shirt and let it soak while he watched me attempt to clean up the mess. Within about three minutes, I threw up ALL over. It was hilarious….especially when Favorite Toddler kept saying “You have big hiccup, too!”

It was already a little past his bedtime (shhh…don’t tell his parents), so I was thankful that we hadn’t already gotten into pajamas and that we hadn’t gotten into bed yet, because cleaning up hiccups in bed would have been a NIGHTMARE. Instead, it was about as straightforward as it could have been – on the tile of the bathroom and wood of the hallway. After the mess was cleaned up, we got into our pajamas and settled down with a VeggieTales movie, and fell right asleep. At breakfast the next morning, when asked by my roommate what we had done the night before, Favorite Toddler said “I had a big hiccup, and HB had a big hiccup in the bathroom!”. It was too funny.

Sunday morning, I got a call from Favorite Toddler’s mom, who was VERY sick with the flu. I picked up her kids to take them to church (her husband is the pastor, so he was already there with other responsibilities). At church, her husband and I commented that our stomachs both felt a little funny, but didn’t think much of it………

Until a few hours later.....when I got BIG HICCUPS for the rest of the day. Seriously. It was SO miserable. It was accompanied by a nasty fever, severe chills, and general WANTING TO JUST SLEEP SO THAT I WOULDN’T FEEL SO DISGUSTING. Ugh. Thank GOODNESS my sister is a doctor – she called in a script of the MIRACLE drug Zofran so that I would stop retching and actually get some sleep. My wonderful friend (who has a three-week-old baby) picked up my meds and some ginger ale for me. And I survived. It actually left about as quickly as it came, and I am feeling almost completely better. Whatever that bug was, it was nasty!

I think the best thing I'll take away from this experience is Favorite Toddler's euphemism for being sick. "Big hiccups" is a much more pleasant way of putting it! But I sure hope I don't have any more big hiccups in my near future!!