Nothing says Happy 5th Anniversary like a chest full of vomit.

Which is how Cam greeted me this morning.  Rob worked from home and let me sleep in.  When he brought a smiling Cam to me, she jumped right in and started her normal bounce.  Then she got really snuggly.  Not like my Campbell.  At all.  After ten minutes laying there drinking it up, we got up to get her changed. 

And then she barfed all down the front of me.  It smelled like Parmesan cheese.  "What the fuck did you feed her for breakfast?!?!?!"

She then became the most pitiful baby I have ever seen.  So unaccustomed to vomiting, Cam kept looking at me with this confused little face.  You see, at 15 months this was the first time Cam has ever been sick.  And we don't hide her away like hermits, I fully let her lick and rub all sorts of germy surfaces just so her immune system will be strong like bull.  I am not prone to panicking, so I didn't call the doctor right away.  I asked the friendly folks of a certain forum what to do.  I ended up calling the doc.  Below is a pic of Cam I snapped from the briefest of moments she let me put her down.  The Zelda hopped up on the sofa and woke her up.  Zelda is lucky to be alive tonight.

Not so much a fan of the emergency visit.  Different doctor, and an asshole nurse.  Sure, have me come in holding my sweating, limp, whiny baby, then rush out of the room three times because you also left other patients in the lurch.  My favorite was the second time: the doc came in to see why she hadn't weighed the baby in the next room.  Why don't you pick that baby up and weigh her your fucking self dude?!  So as my kid sits naked except her diaper, you know, with the goddamned chills, you keep us waiting for another 20 minutes to give me a dose of Motrin.

The doc finally comes in and takes so long listening for her heart, in five different spots on her body, that I start to have a full-on conniption fit in my head.  When he asked to look at Cam's finger tips, I nearly fell over.  He looks at my blanched face and says "oh, sorry.  It's nothing."  After checking her ears and mouth (all clear) he starts saying it's probably a bug.  Only let her have an ounce and a half of water every hour.  He then leaves.

I got better advice and more insight from the internet, before I took her in.

We get home, she won't go to her father so I can change laundry over or get dinner ready.  20 minutes later she is whining and thrashing on my lap.  Get her a piece of banana.  She's done in less than a second and starts signing for more.  Against what the doctor said, I gave her the rest of the banana.  She signs more.  And I tell her "no more, have some juice".  She smacks my arm away and starts to violently thrash on my lap.  So I haul her into the kitchen, and try to appease her with some water.  Smacks that too.  At this point my nerves are shot, I haven't eaten, and Rob is on a conference call.  I put Cam in her high chair, and she immediately starts banging that tray like she does when she knows food is coming (the kid likes to eat.  A lot.).  Gave her an apple sauce cup, then some more coconut juice.  More!  Some rice cake.  More!  Got her to eat a little avocado and more rice cake.  She couldn't cram it in fast enough.  After that, it was as if she never took ill.  I kept expecting to see all that food come right back up.  Once, after a particularly bad tumble with the flu (sixth grade) I was so famished, and convinced I was well, I ate like hog.  If hogs liked pickles.  Yeah this dumb-ass ate almost an entire jar of pickles after being sick a week.  It took me years before I ate a pickle again.  So I kept waiting for Cam to erupt.  But she never did. 

Never seen a recovery like that.  She took a bath and went right to bed.  Have I mentioned this was the only time in 15 months she's been sick?

The kid is a machine.

Oh, and Happy 5th Anniversary to Rob...and me.  We had barbecue sandwiches and chips for dinner.  That's traditional for five years, right?