Warning: There be grossness ahead!

As a teenager -- heck, even after I got married -- if anyone had told me the absolutely disgusting things that I would be called on to do as a mother, I doubt I would have believed you. And if you had told me that I would do these things willingly and lovingly and without gagging once (okay, MAYBE once) I probably would have hooted in derision.

I started thinking about this topic this evening as I was eating my dinner. I had fed the kids earlier and they were off in their rooms playing and Mr. Daddy was outside getting the camper ready for our trip, so I was blessedly alone and enjoying a good book with my meal (Run With the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams, if you're curious). Punkin' comes around the corner, stops, and with the trademark red face and grunt of a poop-in-progress lets me know she needs my assistance. Now I have two options, really. I can get up in the middle of my meal and change a poopy diaper OR I can finish my lovely meal and let her wander around for a few minutes with her diaper bespoiled. Frankly, neither is a tantalizing prospect but whaddaya gonna' do? Let the record show that I did get up and change her immediately, but let's just say dinner didn't look quite so appetizing when I returned to the table.

The thing that has absolutely astounded me about my parental ability to handle just about anything is the ability to handle the kids throwing up. There was a time in my life that if I saw it, heard it or smelled it, I was doing it too (I warned you this would be gross!). But since my kids have come along, I have been known to catch it in my hand in order to keep from making a bigger mess. Or allowed them to continue to throw up down the front of my shirt for the same reason. I mean, once they've got you there's no reason to have to clean up yourself AND the floor too! Right? Anybody? Bueller?

I've mentioned this fun fact about Punkin' before -- she throws up a lot. She has probably thrown up more in her short two years than I've thrown up in my entire life. She suffered from severe reflux as an infant which got better as she got older and started solids. The down side to that was that her gag reflex was extremely sensitive and I began to despair that she would ever be able to eat table food. When she would throw up it was truly amazing to watch. You could see her gag reflex kicking in and then all of sudden -- blech! It was just like when you pull the lever and the Play-doh squishes out in interesting shapes, only it wasn't Play-doh. (Gross, I know. But I DID warn you.) Fortunately for everyone involved, she appears to be growing out of all these issues. But heck, they should have had the local sex-ed class come to my house for while. It's the perfect form of birth control. It certainly worked on me!