Little Gymnast

Normally our child seems to fall into the top percentile ranking of toddler energy. He loves to push his body to its physical limits, has a daring attitude, and seems overall a bit gifted in the athletics department (ahem, slightly biased mother speaking, I'll admit). Anyway, it was a huge concern for me when he sat quietly in my lap during the entire library storytime yesterday morning. Atypical to say the least. Sure enough, he came home from the library and crashed for an early nap, which he woke from just a little over an hour in, vomiting all over himself. His hair and neck, pillows, sheets, special blankie, etc. were covered in lovely stomach juices mixed with morning oatmeal breakfast. I put him in the bathtub (yes, he was wailing about it, just wanted cuddled)while I tried to clean up the bed mess. Once I had the tub nicely filled with soothing water and he'd calmed down a bit, he vomited again. I rinsed him off and dried him, dressed him, put him on the couch watching a DVD, and attempted to keep laundering the bedding. But of course he vomited again. So I changed his clothes again, gave him some water to sip, and this time set him on a towel on the couch watching the DVD while I laundered the other couch cushion that was saturated in vomit. Yes, we are renting this furniture. Well, the cycle of cleaning, vomiting, cleaning, vomiting, etc. continued all day long even after Jerry came home from work. Of course, we are healthy eaters who had nothing like saltine crackers, carbonated beverages, or even fruit juice or apple sauce on hand. So poor sickie Mr. Lo got to ride in the stroller as I walked to the store to purchase some stomach-soothing groceries. (Jerry had taken the car to work that day of course).

But what does all this have to do with gymnastics, you may be asking. Well, this morning Lo woke up as his usual bouncy self, so I opted to go ahead and let him attend the Little Gym class we'd scheduled. I think he had food poisoning instead of a stomach bug anyway (the night before he threw up, he insisted he wanted the piece of pizza that sat out in the car for over an hour and I'd let him eat it), so I rationalized it wasn't likely he'd pass on sickness to the other kids. He once again seemed to have more energy than just about any kid in the gymnastics class, so it reassured me he was feeling back to normal. And I felt so pleased at the way he figured out how to use the equipment. Observing his sheer joy at tumbling around on the mats, swinging on the bars, etc. brought me true parental pride. The photo above is just him doing a forward roll at a random fast food playplace, by the way--didn't bring my camera to the gym, but you get the idea.