vomit.

Puking. Hurling. Blowing chunks. Soul coughing. Praying to the porcelain gods. Shouting groceries. Whistling beef. (I have to give Google credit for those last two.)

I hate it. I hate thinking about it, hearing it, seeing it, smelling it, doing it. I know no one enjoys throwing up, but I have a special kind of fear of it. I can probably count on two hands the number of times I've done it since I've been old enough to remember. I can also remember many, many times where I probably should have just thrown up and gotten it over with, but instead chose to live with days of nausea instead. There's actually a term for it: emetophobia. Fear of blowing chunks. Or something like that.

Yesterday, Olivia did it twice. She choked on her afternoon snack and sent a horrid concoction of milk, goldfish crackers, banana and rice cake everywhere. I managed to not totally flip out as I stripped her clothes off and left them in a heap on the high chair tray for my poor husband to clean up later. She's been sort of iffy with eating much of anything lately, and picked at dinner. I gave her a bottle at bedtime, then she wanted more, and then around 9:30pm she was yelling "BA-BA!" from her crib, so I gave her a little more milk. Big mistake.

Around 10pm she woke up and I could see on the baby monitor that she was just sort of sitting in her crib, not really moving. If you know Olivia at all, not really moving is not really her style. Her head was slumping forward occasionally, almost like she was asleep sitting up. Again, totally unlike her. Dan thought I should just leave her alone because she wasn't crying, but I had a weird feeling and went to check on her. Yeah, you already know where this is going. The poor thing had puked all over her jammies and was just sitting there sort of shivering. Saddest sight ever. I think she just must have had too much milk, because she seemed totally fine after we changed her out of her wet PJs and remade the crib. She didn't end up going back to sleep until after midnight, but thankfully at least slept through the night. Phew.

Breakfast and lunch were uneventful today, so I'm just going to go with "random fluke" instead of "Terror alert: High. Stomach virus in house. Commence freakout."