Post incident — You'd never know anything even happened. Ha!
I've had a few moments where I've thought, "this is it, my true welcome to motherhood moment," but this past weekend's incident tops all the rest!
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"Owie, owie, owie!" rings from the backseat of the car as I pull into the Trader Joe's parking lot. I find the spot closest to the cart corral and put the car into park. I walk around to retrieve my son from his apparent jaws of life car seat situation. He seems fine — I don't see any owies.
It is a frigid cold, midwest December morning. The plaza is busy, everyone is out checking off their Saturday morning errand list. As we head toward the grocery entrance, halfway through the parking lot, I hear the horrifying noise...The owie is his tummy. Standing in the middle of public, my son and I are now both covered in vomit.
We hurry back to the car, grab the beloved fuzzy blue blanket and quickly wipe as much of the puke off as possible. My son tells me he is alright, so I decide that this is undoubtedly my inaugural mom moment. I bite the bullet, lose my dignity, covered in puke, we head inside to finish our errands.
I plop my son into the cart and we stroll quickly past the flowers and are standing by the produce. All I can smell is the putrid stench we are both wearing. My arm reaches over to my back and it is all wet. I turn my back to my son, "Is there something on my back?" Turning forward, I look as he nods and smiles. Ugh!
We push through the other shoppers as quickly as possible and head to the restroom. I take off my coat to find my son's vomit streaming down the back — from my shoulder all the way to my knees. All I have on underneath the coat is a pair of leggings and a thin t-shirt. I was totally not prepared, and didn't have another option than to wear my stained and foul-smelling coat. I run to the paper towel dispenser and pull out wads to rub on our coats. This was as good as we were going to get.
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Sorry to the lady in the freezer section who I had to reach over to grab the frozen mangoes. Sorry to the checkout lady — we had an entire cart full of groceries to scan as we just stood there stinking up the air. And finally, sorry to all those in the parking lot who saw me in my grandest mothering moment to date — wiping off the puke, yet still heading in to do our shopping.
Welcome to motherhood!
