By Katie Blackburn
@katiemblackburn

He probably ate something that didn’t agree with his stomach. I’m sure it’s just a one time thing, said every mom ever, willing it with her words to be true. 

My husband was out of town with our two oldest kids when the first child threw up. As I washed vomit out of my two-year-old son’s hair a little after midnight, I had no choice but to convince myself this was the worst it would get. One child. One time. Such a precious thought. Did I mention my husband was out of town?

There are six children in our home. Six loud, funny, unique kids that keep life very busy and exciting. And because we cannot actually afford to go anywhere with six kids, we are home, together, a lot. It works for us right now, this extended amount of time all in one place, like our living room. It’s an incredible amount of work to get six kids safely buckled in their appropriate car seats—picture loading half a field trip into a carnival ride —and that’s after we’ve spent twelve minutes trying to find everyone’s shoes. Seriously, where do all the shoes go? (I don’t even bother with socks between April and October). My point is: getting out is expensive and difficult, and so we stay in an awful lot—and will be until everyone can find their own dang shoes. This is, on the whole, a sweet season though, and we are making a lot of family memories with all the movie nights in the basement and picnic dinners in the backyard.

Until someone gets the stomach bug. With all this togetherness, there are rarely survivors.

After I washed my little boy’s face and changed his pajamas, I got back in bed and said a silent prayer that whatever this thing was, it would go no further than the toddler, then fell back asleep, too exhausted to think about it anymore. 

By 5:00 a.m., the baby was awake and the toddler’s room remained quiet, so I felt cautiously optimistic that this could, in fact, be a one-time thing. We had only a few hours until it was time to go pick my husband up from the airport, and honestly, Beckett, the sick child, seemed fine. No one else in the house gave me any indication they weren’t feeling well. He just ate something bad. I knew I was right. 

So we got in the car. All of us. The toddlers even had shoes on. And because my confidence in the idea that my midnight visit to Beckett’s room was “just a one time, one kid thing” was a bit too high, I even stopped for an iced coffee and avocado toast. Rookie, you are all thinking at this moment. You would be justified.

The barista at the drive-thru had just handed me back my ATM card when I turned around to the muffled cries of my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Ava, gagging and looking at me with scared eyes. Everything she had eaten for breakfast was now on her face, her shirt, her lap, the carseat.  Her sweet younger brother—who started this whole thing twelve hours earlier—just kept saying, “Oh no! Oh no!” and I, still waiting for my coffee and toast, simply turned back around to the barista, smiled and acted like, Nothing to see here! My children are definitely not vomiting right behind me now, please just hurry with my latte. 

We were already halfway to the airport, where my husband and two oldest children were due to land in a few minutes. We couldn’t go home. I pulled away from the drive-thru and into the parking lot to assess the damage. I peeled the clothes off Ava, thanked God I actually had wipes in the car because there have been many-a-car-spills in the past I was completely unprepared for, and did my best to clean the mess out of the van. The smell? There was nothing to be done in that moment. Let’s all take a second to be thankful we’ve all got a few (various stages of clean) masks in our car by now. 

I rolled all the windows down and sprayed OnGuard sanitizer as generously as I could, but the traveling members of my family still got picked up in a van carrying the only stench worse than the airplane bathroom they had just come from.

My husband, Alex, climbed in the front seat and let me know right away he did not feel well—that he hadn’t been feeling well all day. Was this just bad luck, or did the stomach bug exposure happen pre-weekend away and then kick in for everyone within the same twenty-four hour span three days later? We may never know. The facts in front of me included two sick toddlers, a nauseous husband, two big kids complaining about the smell, a newborn, and a six-year-old in the back seat who was thus far ok, just taking it all in. 

By the time we arrived home, Alex felt dizzy, both toddlers needed a bath, the big kids needed to unload their suitcases, and I was threatening time outs to anyone who so much as breathed on the baby. We got the whole crew in the house and somewhat settled in, covered the couches with spare sheets and blankets, cleaned up two more toddler vomits, and then my husband went off to bed. I changed my clothes and obsessively washed my hands before sitting down to nurse the baby, taking a second to listen to the rain hitting the window in what was one of the first calm, quiet moments of the day. 

Then I remembered the car seat.

The one out in the van, still covered in throw up. 

There are a lot of moments in motherhood where you get to choose your attitude toward something. 

When you go to grab the clean sweatshirt you planned on wearing and find it still wet in the washing machine. When you’re already late getting out the door and smell the poopy diaper just as you hoist the toddler on your hip to buckle him in the car. When you are making dinner and find you are out of the ingredient you swore was in the pantry last time you looked. Or, you know, when you think you finally have all the vomit cleaned up and remember there’s a significant amount of it still drying in a car seat. 

We get to choose our attitudes in these moments: are we going to grumble and complain about these inconveniences, or can we demonstrate to our kids self-sacrifice and service and humility in the small, everyday moments?

This is where I tell you that I am not that noble.

I finished feeding the baby, made sure the toddlers had bowls right next to their heads, gave an angry-side-eye to my husband through the bedroom door because he had the nerve to get sick too, then walked out to the van to get the car seat. I unclipped the safety belts, pulled it down, and set (bitterly tossed?) it in front of my garage in the rain. 

Good enough, I thought to myself. Good enough.

Because sometimes, mamas, we just cannot do one more thing.

Over the next three days, six out of eight people in our home went down with this stomach bug. The baby and I survived, for which I thank Jesus and my threats to all other kids to not share his airspace, but mostly Jesus. I was too busy with the laundry and the surface wiping and the bowl rinsing in the house to go back to the car seat for nearly 48 hours, but the rain did an excellent job of doing what I couldn’t. Eventually, I did take some dish soap and a hose to it, then let the sunshine take care of the rest. 

Maybe there’s a simple but deep lesson in here for me, something about how saving a task for later is not always bad, or how the rain and time can wash a lot of filth away, and that sometimes, when you can’t do one more thing, good enough really is good enough.

Photo by Lottie Caiella.