Now I'm a research scientist

I heard the NIH is getting a bunch of cash in the pending stimulus package. I'm sure they think they have plenty of good uses for the money, but I have a proposal: a Department of Domestic Biochemistry. This is my first scholarly submission. Though not exactly ground-breaking, I don't think anyone can possibly deny its scientific merit.


The Efficacy of Mothers as a Growth Medium for Pediatric Pathogens

It is generally believed that children are carriers of, if not infected with, a wide variety of virulent pathogens continually between the months of October and April annually. It is also commonly believed that children, because they are filthy little beasts, are highly effective transmitters of these pathogens. This article examines the efficacy of child-maternal disease transmission.

Methods
Test group: One (1) female mother, age 39, was individually innoculated with the organism Nares Verdi Snotulinum in the following manner: a single pediatric vector, age one year, deposited a nose full of bright green nasal mucous ("snot") into his mother's mouth by placing his nose directly into her mouth and blowing. Snot transfer rate was 100%.

Control group: One (1) male father, age 34, was not innoculated.

Results
Innoculation occured on Day One (Monday) at 1700 hours. No maternal changes were noted on Days Two and Three. On Day Four (Thursday) at 1500 hours, the mother reported subjective changes such as fatigue and mild headache. Within two hours she was sitting motionless in a living room chair with measurable nasal congestion, while her children ran wild and ate alarming amounts of candy and played "toss the baby." By 1945 hours (ahem, 7:45 pm, people) she was unconscious in bed in her pajamas with a box of tissues, displaying all signs of fulminant Nares Verdi Snotulinum infection. The control group remained (of course) asymptomatic.

Extensive statistical analysis showed a 100% correlation between the following variables: motherhood, placement of pediatric snot in mouth, and upper respiratory infection.

Conclusion
In the experimental household, if a child is displaying symptoms of the "common cold," he will with 100% reliability deposit infected mucous on the mother, and she will also become infected within 72-96 hours. In the majority of cases the father will remain disease-free. No further research on this topic is warranted.

When creme brulee goes bad

Having survived Halloween and CNN's totally stupid holographic coverage of the election, I can get back to writing about significant, news-worthy issues. Like vomit.

I cannot stand throw-up. It makes me limp and quivery. With division of labor, I'm the poop-parent, and Jeff's the puke-parent. He takes care of any mess that comes out the top end, and I take care of the bottom-end disasters.

Most of the time.

Sunday night, we were safely tucked into bed and I was peacefully not having nightmares about Sarah Palin being our president, but was awakened by the creepy feeling that someone was watching me.

Jensen was hovering over me. "Mom, my stomach hurts." Great. Evan had been throwing up (so. many. times.) for 24 hours, so this only made sense. And with a silent, decisive nod, he clapped his hand over his mouth, turned and bolted into our bathroom. Then, just as abruptly, he stopped running. And I heard a loud splat.

Jeff (who had also awakened by now) yelled, "Run!!!" So Jensen recommenced running to our toilet to finish the job.

Jeff took him upstairs to clean up, and I just lay in bed and waited for Jeff to return and clean up the carnage. But he didn't come back. For ages.

Finally, because I couldn't stand the stench anymore, I ventured into the bathroom to survey the damage. Jensen had puked creme brulee from Jeff's birthday dinner all over the place. Floor, toilet, walls, bathtub, door: everywhere.

Holy hell.

Creme brulee: heavy cream, egg yolks, sugar. (Definitely not for those with weak coronary-artery constitutions. But sooo good.) It was like cleaning up an oil slick (thankfully, there were no waterfowl in our bathroom, because it would have been an enormous pain to get them cleaned up). I used an entire roll of paper towels, and a lot of chemicals (I had to use something to cut the fat), but I got it done. I weakly made my way into the laundry room, where, to my happy surprise, a mountain of stinking bed linens awaited me. Gawd.

When Jeff had gone upstairs to help Jensen clean up, he found Evan in a dead sleep, entirely encrusted in dried vomit. He had thrown up in his sleep. And then Jensen threw up again. So I was forced to wash out two beds' worth of disgusting sheets. I cannot describe the depth of my disappointment. Between the bathroom and the chunky sheets, it took an hour and a half to clean up.

We threw open the windows, scrubbed grout, and cleaned floors multiple times. After about 36 hours, the nose-hair-singeing, lingering reek of vomit no longer permeated the air and our bathroom floor was no longer slippery and greasy. And while I'm tempted to say we've emerged from the puke-ocalypse, I really don't want to jinx anything.

And I think it's safe to say it'll be a while before I eat creme brulee again.

There's no title for something this gross

All of a sudden, Caleb cares about what he eats. He's getting finicky. Like the other night when he turned up his cute nose at carrots and some expensive organic whole-milk yogurt that I buy because I'm so paranoid about what goes into his little baby body.

Probably because he was full of tree mulch, which he had spent the last 20 minutes eating in the front yard.

This got me thinking about some of the completely repulsive things my kids have eaten. I mean, they've all eaten dirt, or three-day-old dessicated "leftovers" they discover under the kitchen table. That stuff is pedestrian, for amateurs. I'm talking about the stuff that actually made me gag a little.

Like when Jensen announced at dinner, "You know, flies don't taste as good as they look." (He got bored one day in kindergarten and decided to eat a fly and didn't really care for it.) Or when he made Evan eat a worm after he watched the movie "How to Eat Fried Worms." (That is the grossest movie ever made, by the way.)

Or when he discovered old gum on the bottom of a restaurant table. Or when Evan plopped down on a theater floor and made a meal of what he found there.

That stuff is yucky, but I think most parents (at least parents of boy-children) have similar tales.

But: brace yourselves. Because this next one is Really Bad.

When one of the big boys (who shall remain nameless) was a pre-walker, he had diaper rash. We let him crawl around with a bare butt, to air him out a little. And because it was cute. Until we found him sitting in a corner, happily snacking away on his own poo. It was in his hair. In his ears. Up his nose. And in his mouth.

Not cute anymore.

Jeff wimped out, and left the room gagging. (This from a man who ate his lunch while watching a doctor break my water last time I was in labor. Ew.) Which meant I had to clean up this 9-month old human octopus who was covered in crap.

Baby wipes. Q-tips. Washcloths. Baby shampoo. Ivory soap. After I figured out where to start (his hands) I got the majority of him cleaned up pretty easily. But how was I supposed to clean out his precious mouth? I wiped it out with a washcloth, but that didn't really get it all. It was still plenty yucky in there.

Turns out the answer was right in front of me: Jeff's toothbrush. Of course! (That's the price he paid for sticking me with this horrific task.) So I brushed the babe's mouth until I made him gag, and called it good. I'll tell you what, though, it was a while before I let the little guy give me one of those wet, sloppy, open-mouth baby kisses.

(Because I love my husband, and am not [entirely] evil, I did tell him about the toothbrush before bedtime hygiene. Probably would have made for a better story if I hadn't. But, seriously....)

I've never heard anyone share a similar story. Which leads me to wonder: is it because everyone else has enough common sense not to admit that this happened to them? Or is it because we are the worst parents in the world and nobody else would ever allow this to happen in the first place? If you could set my mind at ease, I'd really appreciate it.

I should have HazMat on speed-dial

I am not a germophobe. I have pretty strong faith in the human immune system. And I have survived the potty-training of two boys. (With one more to go, at which time I will deserve a medal of honor.) I clean their biohazard bathroom with minimal hysteria. No passing out, and I only rarely yell, "This is disgusting!" I think I only vomited once, and that's when I was pregnant. I am not a bathroom wimp. Which is good, because the boys are pretty oblivious to the alarming stench and ick they produce on a daily basis.

I do, however, kind of have an aversion to port-a-potties. I don't think that's unreasonable.

So, given this information, imagine my horror. My seven-year-old son emerged from a port-a-potty this weekend gagging. And said, in a quiet and somewhat stunned voice, "I think I should probably wash my hands before I eat."

I do not want to know what happened in there.