Spag-a-weenie

I think we can agree that the worst days are not when Luke is totally under-napped, or over-sugared; they're the days like yesterday when he is a total wet noodle. Luke spent the majority of yesterday throwing up, due to some stomach virus or something, and it was sad and extra-hard. The worst of the worst is when all he wants to do is eat or drink something, then it comes back up again, and then we have to convince him (!) to wait for a reasonable two-hour window before eating or drinking again, ha, ha. I can only listen to the whimpering and moaning for so long before I give in to caregiver exhaustion and have to turn it over to Dave for a while (which I did, and he used the time to take a somewhat cheerier Luke to Home Depot, ending in a car splattered with bananas). Anyway. At least Luke has the good sense to start these things on Friday night so we have the whole weekend to work it through together.

Luke's wet-noodle condition was so extreme that I was able to sit next to him on the couch yesterday, cutting out little red paper hearts for valentines, and his only reaction to the scissors was a labored glance of a glazed eye over in my direction, then eyes back to the TV (compared with typical reaction: "OH! I need the scissors for a project!!") At one point I suggested using the shredder (a favorite activity) and when we found out the shredder was broken, he simply stared mutely in my lap for 10 minutes while Dave and I discussed what might be wrong (compared with typical reaction: "What happened to the shredder? Why is it broken? Who's going to fix it? What do you think Daddy might say? What do you think I might say?")

The only time we got him to crack a smile was when we were watching the Food Network and Emeril couldn't get the spaghetti pasta-maker to work and he had to make fettucine/linguini, and he called it "spag-a-weenie." That got the weakest little sick-person laugh out of Luke, and it was a rare moment of sunshine in an otherwise wet noodle day.

Today he's cheerier but he had the meltdown of all meltdowns when we went to the store and I told him no, we are not going to buy the Yard of Gumballs. We finally made it back home after a detour for a green popsicle and now he's telling us his ear hurts. So we could be back to the drawing board tomorrow, but I'll take an earachey guy over a throw-uppy guy any day.