Child Vomit 101

(Imagine sitting in class, lots of chairs, other people, board up front, and a dour looking professor type walks in)

"Welcome to Child Vomit 101. I'm sure many of you here are parents, or will be parents in the coming months. As I'm also sure you are aware, children will throw up, and it will not be pretty, in spite of a few names for vomit, like 'technicolor yawn' or 'praying to the porcelain god, at the porcelain altar.' If you remember these names from college (or high school, for some of you) [now some people are laughing quietly in the background], you are not alone. At least you had the benefit of someone holding your head as you let loose in the toilet, or had friends get upset with you for yakkin' on the floorboard of their car.

"Your children, on the other hand, will vomit just about anywhere! You may or may not be prepared for this. They will vomit in the grocery store just after drinking down a cherry red slushie, and then scream loudly about how it's not pleasant. YOU will have to deal with this! Oh the terror of red-slushie puke everywhere. But you must remain calm, get the handy wipes you keep with you out, and hope the staff comes running! The best you can do is wipe the child's mouth and face, and try to maintain some dignity as you walk out of the store with a screaming child. If you were lucky, you didn't get any on you. But, as you will no doubt discover, because of the sudden nature of these violent vomit attacks, you will have some on you, somewhere, and it will smell.

"You must be prepared for these attacks day or night! As you go through your child's infancy, you have certainly been awakened by a screaming, hungry child. Vomiting children are no different! If you are lucky, they will scream and tell you they are nauseated before vomiting (and hopefully you won't get nauseous). You will then have time to move the child, and yourself, to the bathroom before the event. The child will occasionally let you know that he or she is about to begin selling buicks. Hand motions to the mouth, accompanied by unhappy screaming, usually indicate some kind of 'reverse digestion' event. If you are unlucky, you will be awakened by a vomit covered child, which will require at least a three step cleaning process: the child in the bathroom (with bath and new clothes), the child's bedding, and finally, yourself, because there's almost no way you can avoid getting sticky, smelly, icky [shudder] liquidy stuff on you because you are comforting a screaming, sickly child.

"Your reward for remaining calm, and not being angry at the child for not being considerate or knowledgeable enough to not vomit on your carpet or clothes? Sleep! Great stories later in his or her life, when the child is dating! An interesting lecture from your child on 'frow up' as he or she tries to understand the vocabulary, and context of what just happened. That's actually pretty funny!

"Ladies and Gentlemen, make sure you have your cleaning supplies at the ready! For your educational pleasure we have brought in a video from 'America's Funniest Home Videos' just to show you how often and unexpectedly small children vomit."

Hope you enjoyed the lecture from the missing manual of parenting. :-)