AN UN-FUNTASTIC AFTERNOON

With the rain squashing our plans to frolic outside in the sunshine, a play date was set up to meet some friends over at our local indoor playground, Funtastic. It must be impossible to have a bad time at a place called Funtastic, even on a dreary cold rainy day. Well, it is possible, and I’ll tell you how.

Everything was going well at first. Ellie was climbing, sliding, playing and laughing with her friend, Ben and having a ball. And my friend Alison and I were feeling the playtime vibe too chatting about nap schedules while our babies smiled and stared at each other. But this vibe wouldn’t last long.

I was sitting on the couch gently bouncing Chloe on my knee when it happened. The “fun” in our Funtastic afternoon quickly disappeared. All of a sudden I felt something warm and wet on my lap. And before I could finish my thought of “Oh man! She just spit up!” Chloe kept spitting up. Actually, it was a lot more than spit up. This was a full on puke.

I sat stunned holding her while she unloaded what felt like buckets of vomit directly onto my crotch. Warm, sticky, gooey, milky puke, all right on my crotch.

I froze while I watched her unload her bodyweight of spoiled milk onto me. My friend just watched in horror while shielding her baby from any reflecting debris. It wasn’t until she reached for my diaper bag did I snap out of my trance and attempt to clean up the mess. But I still had no idea what to do. How do you clean this entire mess up with a few baby wipes?

It wasn’t until I stood up did I realize there actually wasn’t a lot to wipe up. My clothes had absorbed most of the mess like a sponge… deep down through my underwear. Ugh! I had a mad case of milk pants. I always pack a change of clothes for Chloe, but I had never imagined I would need a change of clothes for me.

Needless to say, the play date was over. Talk about being a wet blanket (well actually, wet pants). I changed Chloe’s clothes, wiped up the mess (thank God for vinyl couches), gathered up our belongings and did the walk of shame back to my car. (It’s hard to walk with pride while you’re soaked through to your underwear with baby-milk vomit). Luckily, my folks live just down the street and we were going there.

I gave my mom a heads up on our situation before barging through the door walking funny and reeking of spoiled milk. My dad, who had just got word of our predicament, was in mid chew of his salami sandwich when we entered the kitchen. The look on his face said it all as he quickly fled to thebasement before the engulfing stench completely ruined his lunch.

Once I bathed Chloe and had fresh clothes on her, I could attend to my own sticky milk pants. I opted to stay at my parent’s house to handle my dairy dilemma and do laundry because I wasn’t about to drive all the way home sitting in vomit soaked pants. But not only did I have to wash my pants, I also had to wash my underwear. Neither of which I keep a stock at my parent’s house. So what did I have to do? While my clothes were in the washer, I was wearing my mom’s sweat pants and an over-sized “proud to be an American” T-shirt my folks had gotten free in the mail.

“Why my mom’s sweat pants?” You might be asking. Well, my dad’s are too big for me, and considering I wasn’t wearing any underwear, I didn’t want to walk around my parent’s house with saggy pants while going commando.

If you think wearing your mom’s pants is weird, try wearing your mom’s pants without any underwear. There is just something completely wrong about that. But somehow, it seemed better than wearing milk-puke soaked underwear. At least I knew from that point on, the day could only get better.

Being a parent, I’ve been spit on, spit up on, had snot blown and wiped on me. I’ve had poop smear on me and been pooped on. I’ve even been puked on before, but I’ve never been puked on in public. And now that I have, I feel like I’ve been hazed into an elite, yet unfortunate, group of people. And without question, I can say it’s anything but Funtastic.