Tossing Cookies

It's amazing how the kids get sick, right on cue, every single time their daddy goes out of town. It's as predictable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

Tonight was open house at the girls' school. I should have known early in the evening a problem was brewing. No one ate dinner, except me. The kids cried during bath-time, howled while getting dressed, whimpered in the car and clung to me during open house.

As we were leaving the school function, Valerie begged for a cookie and I consented that each child could have one cookie. Valerie ate hers while walking to the car. Dagny just held onto hers as I carried her. As I buckled them into their respective car-seats, Valerie tried to weasel Dagny's cookie out of her hands, "Mommy, Dagny doesn't want her cookie. Can I have it?"

"No, let Dagny have a chance to eat it."

Dagny was conspicuously quiet during this exchange. If only I had paid attention to the nonverbal...

Listening to Valerie whine about "needing" another cookie, I managed to drive a mile and a half away from the school to hear Dagny grunt and upchuck the entire contents of her stomach all over herself, her car-seat and her jacket which had been thrown on the floor of the back seat. After that brief act, Dagny didn't make a peep.

Of course, I was concerned about my youngest child, but I could only think of my mother's knack for kids barfing in the back end of our family's station wagon growing up. As cool as a cat, tonight, I rolled down all the car windows to dilute the stench, stepped on the gas and told the girls that everything was going to be okay.

Meanwhile, Valerie shrieked, "Ewe... mommy, Dagny is disgusting! Mommy, it STINKS! Mommy, help me, Dagny is so GROSS. I can't sit back here anymore. Mommy, it stinks back here! Mommy.... EWE! I can't breathe!"

And then the kicker, "MOMMY, I DON'T WANT DAGNY'S COOKIE ANYMORE!"

Yeah honey, she tossed 'em!