Thursday, December 23, 2004

Poor Sick Baby 

She's been a healthy kid, almost superhumanly so; when the doctor asks if she's been sick much, we laugh heartily, though it makes us feel guilty somehow -- how did we get so lucky? More, she recovers quickly from trauma, proudly showing off her catscratches to supermarket strangers, admiring her bruises under the bathbubbles.

So I'm unprepared to come home from the LAN to find her happily ogling a slightly over-religious holiday concert special -- the type they'd only show at 2 a.m., but then again, it is 2 a.m. She's thrown up several times, each slightly more expected than the last. She seems otherwise her usual, robust highness, but lies awake waiting to be sick again

It's tempting to find cause in the taxation of a perfectly gleeful evening. Pickles and chocolate-covered pretzels and a man she made out of cheese for supper; a long bath in a cold bathroom that smells strongly of catbox; snow angels in the dry, frigid moonlight wearing nothing but footed pajamas under snowsuit and linerless boots.

Her mother lies by her side, exhausted as only the pregnant can be. The room smells like vomit. Their sleep schedules will be off for days.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

She'll toughen. You can never have enough glee.

posted by boyhowdy | 11:33 PM |

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