Love is

I dare say, very few things gross me out as a mom. Not after I’ve been vomited, peed and pooped on with poop of various consistencies. I’ve had my son draw a mural on the floor with his own crap. One time, a stray piece of poop was found under the sofa, and by the time we found it, it looked like it was alive because it was buzzing with flies. Don’t ask.

Suffice to say, my tolerance for all things gross is legendary. For example, I can scrape crap off his diaper with my bare hands without flinching. After a while, you think that you’ve seen it all but the thing with kids, they are a lot more creative than you give them credit for.

Last week, baby Kirsten has raised the grossness stakes and it is the best one yet.

So usually, I like to sit her on my chest while I’m lying down on the bed and sing to her. It’s one of our favorite daily activities. Sitting on momma’s chest and listening to me belt out Jason Mraz. She’ll put her face real close to mine and gaze into my eyes, which is awfully sweet and very good for bonding time.

Except that this time, I must have been jiggling her too much and right in the middle of my I’m Yours rendition, she regurgitated and threw up right INTO MY MOUTH and all over the rest of my face. (I swear some went into my eye) On retrospect, it was like I was asking for it because 1. gravity works against me by pulling the stream of vomit downwards towards my face, 2. my heartfelt number requires me to open my mouth real wide and 3. with her sitting on my chest, there is absolutely nowhere to run without flinging her off me.

These are moments in life where things happen very fast but when you are at the receiving end, your mind processes it in slow motion and there was a split second where I was thinking “I’m pretty sure baby girl is about to vomit into my mouth and I should do something about it. I think I should close my mouth. But what if it hits me in the eye? Does that mean I’m going to go blind? Maybe I should catch it with my mouth so that it doesn’t blind me. Oh crap.” Yes, my brain processes all that information in a split second.

Now that I think about it, I should have gone with closing both my mouth but my ninja reflexes failed me when I needed them most and I got thrown up on good and proper.

The silver lining is that I learnt something new from this and I’ll share it with you so you don’t have to learn it the hard way.

Love is having someone vomit into your mouth and not freaking out because you don’t want to scare her, so you take a moment to put her down gingerly, wipe the puke from your eyes and proceed to throw up the entire contents of your lunch.

Also, when somebody is about to vomit on your face, close both your eyes and your mouth.