This post is not about...

my Friday morning and how as I ordered myself a coffee, I looked down to watch Avery lean over and puke onto Ainsley, who was peacefully lounging in her carseat.

It's not about how I had to take Ainsley's socks and pants off and wipe her body and carseat clean with a pile of napkins while I sat in the middle of the floor in the middle of my favorite little coffee shop.

It's not about how I had to embarrassingly ask the barista dude to mop up my two-year-old's oatmeal with raisins that she'd eaten for breakfast two hours earlier, and how I had to stuff Ainsley's clothes and her blanket into a bag and carry them out, along with the vomit that covered them. It's not about how red my face must have been because, frankly, who wants to be that mom whose kid just puked all over the floor?

It's not about how Avery has continued to puke for three days and has only kept down a 1/2 a slice of bread since the morning of said oatmeal puking experience. It's not about how I've had to hold back her hair and clean up her vomit again and again and again. It's not about how I've changed her sheets three times in three days because she couldn't even keep a few teaspoons of water down.

It's not about how I have had NO sleep for the same three days because, to top it off, Ainsley MUST be teething and refuses to sleep. As I sit typing this, Jed is in her room trying to stop her from crying. He is going to fail and I am going to have to go in there, AGAIN, and try to handle things. This will be round four in the last 45 minutes.

It's not about how, after Avery puked at the coffee shop, and I derobed Ainsley and left the coffee shop coffeeless with a bag of vomit and dirty laundry in hand, that puke smell in my car wouldn't go away. There was no actual puke in my car, but the smell... oh the smell. I would try to describe it but I fear anyone reading might then puke themselves, and I can't be responsible for people's computers getting barfed upon just for the sake of some incredible usage of adjectives.

This post is not about how I cleaned every item that even might have come into contact with something barfy, and how after I was confident there was no hint of regurgitated oatmeal with raisins anywhere to be found, the barf smell continued on.

It's not about how, even after two full days of trying to let things air out and making sure nothing from the puke experience was within 20 feet of my car , even after it was all washed, my car smelled as though something was rotting and foul. It's not about how I searched over and over for something like a sippy cup full of milk or a partially eaten string cheese stick under my seat or between the cracks of the back seat. I found nothing. The stench continued.

This post is not about any of that.

This post is about something exponentially more disgusting and almost impossible to believe. It's about the moment when I realized what it was that was creating the stench. It's about that moment, when I zeroed in on where the smell was coming from and still didn't know what I was in for. It's about the moment when I pulled the car seat cover off of Avery's car seat and the smell was getting worse and I was gagging and my mouth was getting all full of saliva like it was my turn to vomit. It's about that very specific moment, when I had the padding and the carseat cover pulled to one side, and I looked down into the narrow, deep, compartment in the carseat where, SOMEHOW, separate from all of the vomit-filled experiences I'd been having for three full days, somehow getting puked and shat upon was only the tip of the iceburg in terms of what disgusting things were about to come into my life.

It's about that very succint second of my life, when I realized that sometime in the past, Avery clearly had had milk in her carseat, and she obviously had let it spill into the padding of the carseat without me noticing. It's about how all of that milk collected in this deep, narrow compartment underneath the padding in her carseat, inside of which NOTHING will fit, and begs the question -- WHY IS IT EVEN THERE?

It's about how I took the carseat out of the car, pulled everything off of it, and got a look at what was causing the smell. I have to say I would rather be puked and shat upon by a flu-bugged two-year-old than have to clean up this half solid, half liquid collection of milk that had been 'aging' in the depths of Avery's carseat for --- God only knows how long.

It's about how I had to scrape and dig that shit out of there, and when I realized there was absolutely NO other way than to just use my fingers to get it out, I cried. I cried because I was so fucking tired, and so fucking OVER being a vomit cleaner extraordinaire. Why did THIS have to happen too? I cried because I am the asshole that let her have a sippy cup of milk in her carseat, and I'm the asshole that somehow didn't notice that a lot of it was magically gone, and I'm the asshole that only cleans the carseat cover when it really, really must be done.

I cried because it was milk and it was spilled, and I don't give a rat's patoot that you're not supposed to cry over things so trivial. I sat on my driveway with all this child restraint paraphernalia scattered across the cement and cried like an idiot, and when I was done, I went into the house, mascara running down my face, my children and husband all laying on the floor, being sick together, and the only thing at that moment that made all of the last 30 minutes of my life fade away was when Avery said "Mom, you're crying!" and she started to cry too and wanted to comfort me. She who had been the most lethargic little thing for three whole days, who can't even stand up or walk from one end of the house to the other -- she said "Mom, don't be sad, come sit on my lap" and motioned for me to do just that.

Come sit on my lap -- can you imagine?

So now I'm trying to get the image of all that liquidy, gloppy curdled nastiness out of my head and it's just not working. I cuddled and hugged Avery tight because, even though she's the one that's been puking and shitting on me for three days, and even though she's the one that let milk spill into the padding of her carseat and didn't tell me, and even though she's the one that demands Wonder Pets and Charlie and Lola from the couch while pointing at the TV, she's the one who put her sickness aside and wanted to comfort me and make me feel better.

My advice is, don't let your kids have milk in their carseats. Just look what happened to me!