My kids LOVE that site.  We have armies of papercraft ninja turtles and other characters lying around the house.

The D got creative with the Super Mario Bros. characters and Super NES paddles.

And here is Little E’s copycat version, featuring the infamous piranha plant.

Little E (age 5) woke up early Saturday morning to diarrhea in his pants.  That trend continued all day long.  No, I mean ALL day long.  That poor guy was on the toilet for at least 10 bouts of diarrhea that day.

Oh, and he had to hold a bowl, too, because at least a few of those times, he was simultaneously vomiting.

He’s still sick, but he had a solid poop yesterday – for the first time – and has not thrown up in a couple of days.  He’s still really, really tired and I do not have him on a regular diet yet.

He had no food Saturday.  (He couldn’t even keep down water.)  Sunday, we went back to regular food, until he threw it all back up.  (Yes, that was stupid, but I paid for my stupidity by having to clean up puke at midnight and then waking up to diarrhea in MY bed at 6 AM.)  Monday, he was on an all liquid diet, per doctor’s instructions.  Tuesday, still mostly liquid, but some rice and bread, and an Edy’s Whole Fruit pureed strawberry pop.  Today, bread, dry cereal, fruit, and he even had some boiled pot stickers for dinner.  So far so good.  I am still keeping him away from dairy, fat, and meat, although the pot stickers had chicken in them.

What saved my sanity during his all day poop-a-thon was overnight pull-up diapers.  I bought them once, ages ago, when he peed the bed twice in a row, but he never had to wear them because it was a fluke.  After he soiled himself 3 or 4 times, I realized that it was going to be a long day of washing diarrhea out of his pants if I didn’t do something.

The pull-ups (not the “pull-ups” brand, store brand) worked great.  I even figured out a great way to remove them – sit him on the toilet before ripping the sides off.  That way, the mess is contained.  (And have a bag on hand to put it in.)

I hate to share this gross story, but if your child ever gets this sick and can’t hold it in, you’ll thank me for the tip.

(Suggestion for a substitute for the soap injector: an oral syringe, such as the type used to give kids medicine. Some pharmacies even give them away for free.)

I am planning on making soaps to give to relatives at Thanksgiving, using the Pumpkin Spice fragrance I recently bought. I am not going to do the exact same project, but I have some ideas that draw their inspiration from it.

Hopefully, I will have pictures tomorrow.

In the meantime, check out this adorable picture.

Little E (5) did that all on his own! He is such a clever and funny little guy! He was waiting for me to finish doing something on the computer earlier, so he could watch something on it (that’s why he had the headphones). When I looked up from the computer, that is what I saw. I had a good laugh!

One thing that is kind of a hassle, though, is that we need to bring his inhaler with us wherever we go in case he needs it. And it’s not just one of those little inhalers, he has a spacer, too.

I have this little Vera Bradley handbag called a Teeny Paddy, with a matching change purse.

The inhaler fits right inside the change purse.

And both the inhaler and the spacer fit inside the bag.

So now, Little E has a designer inhaler kit by Vera Bradley.

Fortunately, he is still at an age where he does not mind carrying around a pretty purse.

I have to point out that he struck this pose without any prompting. He is a little ham.

We recently started looking for a new church. This morning, the guys went back to the church we checked out last week. Wanting the full scoop, I asked Little E how it was.

He said, “It was good. They vaporized two people.”

[Confused silence from me.]

Then it was explained. They had baptized two people this morning!

This morning, he came into my bed with his pillow and said, “My pillow is stuffeder than yours.” (As in, is more stuffed.)

Just now, he was going into the bathroom, but the light switch has a short and wouldn’t turn on. He came out and said, sternly, “I think you forgot to pay the electric bill!”

It is worth noting here that I have never had my electricity turned off, so I am not sure where he learned that. And, yes, I did pay my electric bill.

The other day, we were talking about our phone number (which he knows) and our address (which he does not). I asked him what street we live on. He told me. I asked him what number our house is. He looked at me, puzzled. I told him to go out the door and look at the numbers next to the door. After a few minutes of hard thinking, he came back in and asked, “Eleventy-four?” (It’s 114.)

Ah, I love this age!

He came back in and said, “It’s like summer and winter mixed together… at the same time!”

That’s fall, I told him.

That is until later this morning when I noticed his chest heaving as he struggled for breath.

I called the doctor and was trying to decide whether to bring him in right away or wait a while to see how he was when he came into the room with a look of panic on his face and announced, “Mom, I can’t breathe!”

The doctor, who was still on the phone, said she could see him right away.

I brought him up there and when she listened to him, she thought he had inhaled an object because she could not hear any breath.

She had him breathe in a nebulizer for 10 minutes, then listened again.

This time, she could hear his breathing, but it was wheezy.

She said that she is not ready to say he has asthma, but his body is “acting” like it has asthma and he needs to use an inhaler every four hours, as needed, and take 3 days of steroids.

I cannot explain the panic a momma feels when her little guy tells her he cannot breathe.

It looks like he is going to be fine, though.

Hopefully, he will not have serious asthma, but we will just have to wait and see what happens.

As I groggily opened my eyes, I joyfully exclaimed, “Oh! You here to snuggle!”

He hasn’t been snuggling with me lately because he would rather draw with Big E. He’s reaching that age where boys (maybe girls, too, I have no idea) start to pull away. Big E was the same way, but I had a baby on the way, so it was not as hard to accept.

Needless to say, I was so happy to see him there this morning. I just felt like I really could use a good snuggle. (I am not sure if that had anything to do with the fact that I started my period shortly thereafter.)

“Uuuummmm…” [pause]

I could tell by the look on his face that he was conflicted. He hadn’t come in to snuggle, but he could see that I was excited to snuggle and he didn’t want to break the news to me.

Realizing my mistake, I let him off the hook.

“You didn’t come in here to snuggle, did you?”

He shook his head.

“That’s okay,” I said quickly, before he had a chance to feel bad, “we don’t need to snuggle right now. What did you want?”

I can’t even remember what it was.

All I can remember is how broken hearted I was when I realized that my little guy is too grown up for his morning mommy snuggle time.

After he left, I remarked to my husband, Bob, that Little E once said, when he gets to be too old to snuggle, Dad can snuggle with me.

It wasn’t the same, but it was nice nonetheless.

How did you cope with your baby growing up?

Do I even have any readers who do not still have a baby?