What else could go wrong?

Last Wednesday Babycake got sick. We put her to bed and an hour later rushed up to her screaming cry. Poor little girl was up every hour for the remainder of the night puking until she had nothing left in her. It was a rough night for all. In the morning at 7 am however, she was chipper and raring to go as if she had gotten a full night's sleep with no sickness. It amazes me how kids can bounce back from things.

Two night's later my husband, who averages getting sick to once every two years, went to bed early complaining of an upset stomach. I stayed up watching the Olympics. Once I was done watching I made rounds of locking up the house. To my surprise, I found our garage and basement flooded. We had had a really nasty one hour storm pass through that night, but with it being so short I though nothing of the possibility of flooding. (due to the layout of our house we flood easily). Since hubby was up sleeping off his stomach ache I got to set up our portable sump pump and mop up.

Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time I tumbled into bed. About a half hour after I got in bed, hubby jumps out of bed and pukes on his way to the bathroom. I believe I failed to mention in the beginning of this post how I do not do puke. Dirty diapers, sure, baby spit up, ok, gushing blood, gross but fixable. Puke.... gag.

Anyway, we have hardwood or tile everywhere in our home... except the hallway/stairway... where hubby let it rip. I walked to the bathroom once I no longer heard heaving, and asked if he was ok. He said he felt much better, and that he would clean up the hallway. So I grabbed my pillow and headed downstairs to sleep on the couch where the smell of sick would not reach my nostrils.

The next morning I went upstairs to tend to our alarm clock, aka our daughter. In order to get to her room I had to walk past the disaster zone. Well, there wasn't anything chunky left, but it was far from cleaned up. Hubby was not better. He stayed in bed with exceptions of trips to the loo the following day. Of course this would happen on a day I volunteered to watch my friend's three kids.

So the job of cleaning vomit, and continuing to tend to the flooding lay on my shoulders. My nightmare clean up job come true. I don't know how many times I sprayed and scrubbed that hallway carpet, or squeegeed the basement floor. All that cleaning while making sure the four children under my roof were fed, clothed, relatively happy/entertained and overall surviving. On days such as that one I strive to follow my grandmother's example and honestly wonder how she and her 12 children survived.

In any case, while working on the carpet I used up the remainder of our carpet cleaner and so turned to Pinterest for homemade carpet cleaner recipes. I'm attempting to go green in our house, plus I really didn't feel like hauling the kids to the store. This homemade recipe by TJ is the one I liked the best because it seemed to do as well as the store bought:

http://www.measuringflower.com/2013/06/naturally-clean-vomit-carpet-allpurpose-carpet-cleaner-recipe/

Sad note, this didn't totally clean up the carpet. I think that by the time I got to working on the carpet, it was beyond repair, stained and disgustingly smelly. Most likely if I would have started the cleaning process immediately than it could have been saved.

Yep, I said "could have been saved." We had to rip out the carpet. Now, for most people this would probably be a stressful decision. Me? No way. I have hated that old disgusting carpet since the day we moved in and have just been waiting for an excuse to get rid of it. This was it! I totally didn't plan on this, I tried to clean it. I had my face mask, gloves, and scrub brush. I honestly didn't try to pull one over my husband while he was sick. I just got lucky :-)

Our house was built in the mid 1950s. So in almost every room of the house there is really nice hardwood! For some reason the previous owners thought that it was better to have carpet in every room and covered it up. Um.... No. Not having carpet in the house when there are children is the best thing ever. When they spill you just wipe it up, when they, or your husband, is sick, you wipe it up. There is no scrubbing and deep cleaning involved. Simply, wipe, disinfect, and dry!

I could not be happier with the outcome of hubby's illness. He is fully recovered and currently taking his turn to do the dishes. Our basement is dry, I still have to work more on the garage as it's got dirt everywhere now. Oh, did I mention our basement toilet clogged, and couldn't be easily unclogged that same day and added to the basement flooding? Well, hubby is also working on that tonight since we simply turned off it's water supply to make a quick fix of that problem. It's apparently going to take the stuff he got a couple days to fully unclog the toilet.

I don't think I've ever been happier to have a weekend over and see a Monday.