This weekend was our first attempt at driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. To avoid traffic and a prolonged car ride, we picked to go on Thursday and come back Saturday. On the way there, my younger daughter, the crankier and harder traveler of the two, fell asleep an hour into the trip. She woke up, we had lunch, got back in the car and they watched a video. Suddenly we were there!! Hooray!! I couldn’t believe the ease and uneventfulness of it all. I started planning road trips to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and even a cross country trip to New York!! We had a great time in Vegas, everything was good.
When it was time to go home we had no thought or concern of the return trip so we dilly dallied around and left way past our intended time. We finally set off at 6pm. Little daughter slept thru lunch so I got her yogurt and a croissant for the road. At 8:30 we stop for dinner, she ate more than usual and daddy rewarded her with fruit punch. I got coffee and the kids wanted milk. Ok. No problem. Off we go for the second leg of the drive. Ten minutes on the road, in the dark, we hear gagging. Lights go on and we witness the most harrowing display of vomiting since The Exorcist. My poor little girl threw up 3 times, back to back, the last one being so violent and intense of a stream that we all had a hard time comprehending what we were seeing. It projectiled into the back of the front seat and saturated her clothes and the car seat so that it all dripped to the floor like a waterfall. There was so much vomit I couldn’t believe it all fit in her little body. Well, apparently it didn’t. Yogurt, croissant, fruit punch, chicken dinner, churros and milk. Uh, yeah, maybe a bit much for a tiny stomach. Without exaggeration I estimate the volume to be an entire gallon.
We pull over as soon as we could, in the middle of the dessert with nothing in sight. I didn’t even know where to begin to clean her up. Getting her out of the car seat was a problem because of how slippery she was. I had a hard time pulling her clothes over her head in fear of smearing vomit all over her face and hair. I stretched the head opening until I heard the seam rip and gently got it over without touching her head. The only thing we had were wipes (thank god I decided to bring an extra box!!) so little by little we start wiping away the slime and chunks and got new clothes on her. The seat was another issue. The wipes were not getting the job done. What I needed was a towel so I went into our suitcase and found a terry cloth bathing suit cover up. I soaked it in water and using big swipes got most of the vomit out of the car seat then used wipes for the finer detailing.
Now we had to brace ourselves for the second half of the trip, two and a half more hours! I lined her car seat with t-shirts and wrapped the harness straps with tube socks (yes, clean ones, but even dirty ones would have smelled better than what we were dealing with). Luckily, I had perfume on me so I doused tissues with it and shoved one end into the AC vents so that the air coming out could blow Hermes Verte scent throughout the car. My cousin (who was with us) commented on how nice the perfume smelled. We were all trying our best to not think of (or smell) the undertone of fruit punch / yogurt vomit. It was a good hour before we could talk about it and make jokes about it.
Leave it to your kids to serve up a prescription dose of reality when you’re enjoying uneventful bliss. Now, you’ll have to excuse me so I can go give my current reality a much needed bleaching treatment.