Egg hunt on the beach

The boys and their friend Harper met up on the beach last week for an egg hunt. Once they figured out the idea of it they enjoyed it, to the point of discovering an egg, opening it, pulling out the toy, then dropping everything to move on to the next egg.

While three boys played with small plastic animals and stretchy worms...

... Amy and I furtively shoved chocolate peanut butter eggs in our mouths. We were sitting in chairs chatting when we realized all three boys had disappeared. Just 30 feet away over the sand dune, but man, they’re fast!

Then while Amy was changing Kaila’s diaper – and I was mitigating a serious disagreement between Benjamin and Harper – I looked around for Jonah. There he was, 25 yards down the beach, off on an expedition.

It’s a good thing we did the egg hunt Friday because Easter itself was spent depriving Benjamin of food. For the past 2-3 weeks he’d been sporadically complaining of a stomachache and that he needed a diaper change because it was hurting his stomach. I attributed the former to empathizing with The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar and the latter to preferring another human presence for as long as possible before falling asleep at night.

But then he started puking every few days. And waking a couple times each night complaining of stomach pain. And then he wouldn’t eat most of his meals. Saturday night we had a bunch of people over for dinner and right before we all ate he puked his guts up all over the place.

The next morning he immediately threw up his milk… so that’s it, we called the doctor. Who said it was a virus. What kind of virus slowly gets worse over weeks? But he insisted. So only clear fluids for 24 hours. Diluted Gatorade all morning and he was miserably hungry – he hadn’t had a real meal since Friday night. They ended up watching videos all morning long – it was the only thing that could distract him from his hungriness.

We made him some Jello jigglers for lunch, just so he could have the experience of feeding himself (which is of course his favorite hobby). Then some Cream-of-Wheat made with broth for dinner.

But he did stop puking and complaining of a stomachache and today he’s totally fine.

But all that déjà-vu puking…? Well, that was effective birth control for another few months!

Comments

[Garfield]

You did capture some great shots, the last being a"woe is me" look.

[PreSchool Mama]

You got that right! A sick child is the ultimate contraceptive. Glad to see he's feeling better though!