Everything ran very smoothly and quickly at our house in the morning of 29 February, despite a late start to the day.  With 15 minutes left to get Gigi up and dressed, I walked into her room.

Before I turned on the light and saw, I instantly knew she wasn't going to go anywhere.  There are several things I have become an expert at since becoming a mother - one of these is knowing when vomiting has taken place.  I knew she'd vomited at some point during the early morning, but the thing about Gigi is that it's a large crib (to her) and she likes her sleep, so if you throw up in one corner of your bed, you just move to the clean side(s).  There is no yelling or beckoning "Hey, get in here and clean me up!"  She just moves around the crib and has boughts of sickness and sleep until there are no vacancies left.  I arrived to get her just as she was standing up with no vacancies left.

"Thrup."  She said when I turned on the light.  "My thrup." 

Translated from the Reaganese language into English, this literally means "I threw up" though the exact meaning is lost in translation.  The meaning of "My thrup" is "You're not going to believe the nastiness awaiting you in my crib. And once you see this you will realize the enormous amount of cleanup which will be involved."

Confession time.  Gigi didn't want to eat dinner last night.  She didn't touch her vegetable soup.  Since I am the sort of mother who refuses to admit defeat and let you walk away from the table if you haven't at least had a few bites of something, I pulled out potato chips for Gigi.  She didn't touch them.  This should have sent the Sick Child Radar into motion.  Unfortunately I feel my Sick Child Radar is either broken or was, perhaps, never correctly installed.  I am consistantly surprised when my children become ill, though in hindsight there were clearly warning signs.  At any rate the radar didn't work and I pulled out the one thing in this world Gigi cannot say no to.

Sauerkraut.

Yes.  You read that correctly.  Sauerkraut.  The child loves it.  She can't resist.  I put sauerkraut in front of her and she ate it up.  All of it. 

This probably won't come as a surprise to anyone, but sauerkraut and a stomach virus fall into the same category as gasoline and fire in relation to one another.  You don't want to mix sauerkraut and a stomach virus. 

Since I have taken every sick day with the children since last January, Chris volunteered to take this one.  I didn't tell him about the sauerkraut.  Chris hates sauerkraut as much as Gigi loves it.  I explained to him that the dolls she sleeps with which had been witnesses and recipients of stomach virus needed to be washed - and hand washed at that since none of them are washer/dryer approved.  I grabbed Will as Chris made a "you're joking" face at me as he held a sick child in a soiled nightgown.  I waved and pointed Will toward the car.

We drove off to school.

"Did you tell Dad what she ate?"  He asked. 

"Um..."

"That's mean."  He said.