This Is "Snot" What I Signed Up For!

When I was younger, I swore I would never have kids. I didn't want the responsibility or the accountability of what happens when they turn out like me. But I'm sure we all know things didn't go exactly as I planned.

Now I have 3 kids. Two boys and a girl. I love them to the moon and back...except when they get sick. If it were financially feasible to buy a bubble to keep them in until they were well, we would be adding on an addition to house it.

Nutt (the youngest) woke up this morning with the Niagra Falls of mucus leaking out of his face and mommy forgot her snot slicker. I didn't notice until I was trolling the aisles of Walmart in search of curtains and dryer sheets that I had a smear about the size of Iceland on my left shoulder. Thank god for cart sanitizing cloths that I used to wipe it off (and that someone had probably neglected to use when their kid sneezed their nasty germs all over the cart that my kid contracted this illness from). I have been praying all morning that me and my snot spot don't show up on the People of Walmart website.

It's not like this is my first rodeo but it's still disgusting. Thankfully, I've only been through one other since Tink was housebroken and had been trained on how to use a tissue by the time I met her. The problem is that the other rodeo was about the equivalent of something out of "8 Seconds."

Evel. He got the nickname for a reason. Even from birth everything this kid did was extreme. They told me he was going to be under 6 lbs at birth...he was 8 lbs even. They told me kids didn't walk until they were around 14 months...he was barely 9 months. They told me he had a slight dairy allergy and I witnessed this kid projectile vomit from his high chair to the other end of my 5 foot kitchen table.

I would have traded his "slight dairy allergy" for a snotty nose ANY DAY. I had to read the packaging on everything that we bought and decode the ingredient listing if I didn't want to be cleaning vomit off of every surface in my house. Any kind of dairy sent that kid into a fit that would rival the infamous pea soup scene in "The Excorcist." No milk, no cheese, no pizza. NOTHING.

So being the awesome mom that I am, I began my endeavor into soy foods. Soy milk, soy cheese, SOY CHOCOLATE. Everything that Evel ate, I ate. And now I completely understand why people that eat this way are so healthy.

If you've never eaten soy-based products in place of the normal stuff, please allow me to give you an example of the taste. Take a CD leaflet book, paint it yellow, put it between 2 slices of bread and eat it...you have soy cheese. Most of it was awful and I'm sure the reason that people on a soy diet are so skinny is because they themselves can barely stomach these imitation knockoffs. But the alternative was cleaning up vomit and having a VERY cranky child. I'll suffer quietly while sipping my soy milk infused coffee.

It went on like this until right before Evel was ready to start kindergarten. He stayed at Nana S's house for the weekend so I could have a much needed break before I got another much needed break when I finally shipped him off to school. I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic because I forgot to send his soy milk along. I could just picture my poor, old Nana's face when Old Faithful erupted from my child when he ate his Cookie Crisp and cow's milk in the morning. But then I got sleepy and eventually crashed out.

I wound up not getting up until around 9 AM and ran for the phone to call Nana, praying that Evel was still sleeping. When she answered, I all but screamed into the phone, "Don't give him milk!" I heard silence and then she said, "What? Who in the hell is this? If you're selling something, we don't want it." I finally got my wits about me and explained that I was not a telemarketer, but I was calling to make sure Evel didn't drink milk or she would have a very loooong morning. You know what this lady said to me?

"Really Jennifer? I told you all along that this allergy thing was just in your head. He ate a bowl of cereal an hour ago and he's fine. He's outside playing. I told him to just run for the woods if he felt sick. I don't want him puking in the yard because the cats will eat it." Gotta love Nana.

So just as quickly as Evel's dairy allergy had come on, it had vanished. After that, he could eat anything. We had pizza and McDonald's cheeseburgers and Red Rabbit milkshakes. We ate it ALL! We even had a good time feeding all of the crappy soy stuff to the stray cats that used to use our flowerbed as a litter box. They never came back.

All of this just to raise a child that would talk back to me and think that Big Daddy and I are walking ATM machine. I'm glad we're done having kids. Our luck, if we had another it would be allergic to keeping wine in the house.