katie, ben, lucy and cora

Our first game of the season will definitely be one for the record books.  Looking back, I wish we had taken more pictures as the events unfolded.  But, that’s not exactly where our focus was at the time.

It all started with a trip downtown for a lovely family evening at our first Astros’ game of the new season.  New team to watch.  New league to be a part of.  New stomach bug to share with all around us!  Wait…huh?!?!?  Yup…here’s the story….

So to begin, we pick up the girls at daycare at the end of the work day.  When I arrive at Cora’s classroom (decked out in my team jersey), Cora’s teacher sees me dressing her in her Astros’ t-shirt. She asks, and I tell her that we are headed out to the stadium to watch the game.  She warns me that Cora just had a messy diaper, and gives me a plastic bag and extra pair of pants….just in case.

So…off to the game we go.  We had just gotten to the stadium, and settled down in our seats to enjoy our hotdogs and nachos.  Ben has Cora in his lap and is feeding her hotdog pieces; then all of a sudden it happens – Cora vomits ALL over Ben.  She heaves about three times on him, covering his jersey, before I can set my food down and grab her.  I quickly move her to the empty row behind us where she continues to heave several more times!  A traveling beer vendor approaches right at that moment declaring loudly, “Well, this will be a game to remember!  Do you need help?”  I responded that towels or napkins might be helpful.  So he proceeds to holler at the usher above in a booming voice, “Hey Usher!  Sick kid down here!  You got towels?!”  I look at Ben as he begins to peel his jersey off, and I carefully wipe some vomit out of his beard.  He just quietly looks at me and says, “Just get her taken care of.” (In other words - “Don’t worry about me, I’ll figure it out.”)

So I grab Cora and with my arms out straight in front of me, I carry her to the nearest bathroom.  I strip her down to only a diaper and begin to rinse all the vomit off of her clothes and shoes.  Alice comes in a few minutes later with Ben’s soiled jersey.  Poor Cora is just standing in the middle of the bathroom, looking like a Zombie baby.  I tell Alice that I will keep rinsing clothes; but then I ask her to please go buy Ben a new shirt – later we realize that he was already in the gift shop doing just that!

So there I am in the bathroom, rinsing off all the disgusting clothes.  I pause to peek over at Cora because she has become very quiet all of a sudden.  A little too quiet.  I then quickly realize that she is thinking….and I know exactly what she is thinking about as her diaper begins to sag.  And then the next round hits…..as the diaper fails and “stuff’ begins to leak down Cora’s legs onto the floor!  Good Grief!  Could this night get any worse!  I’ll spare the next details.  But thankfully Alice came back to the bathroom to check on things just in time.  She helped me get Cora all cleaned up and changed – and we got the hazardous waste triple bagged.

By the time we returned to the seats, the mess had been cleaned up as if nothing ever happened.  Thankfully (kinda), all this happened so early in the game that the big crowds had not quite arrived yet.  So hopefully I don’t think it ruined the evening for anyone around us!

So the good news is that Cora kept it together for the rest of the night.  Bad parents that we are, we actually stayed for the rest of the game.  I ended up taking the following three days off from work.  This all happened on Tuesday of last week.  Well, we got a phone call from the school on Wednesday (lunch time) that Lucy had started throwing up.  So we had both girls at home for the remainder of the week – sick as dogs for three days each with this stomach bug.  Then poor Ben got hit with it on Saturday.  Yet again – a three day bug for him.  Awful little germ!

Some how, I escaped the plague, despite being on clean up duty for nearly a week!  But, everyone is well again in the Coate household.  We all survived the plague.  And hopefully our next trip the Astros will be a bit less eventful!

During the last week of March, the California Coates came for a visit.  Their Spring Break happened to coincide nicely with Nanny’s birthday, followed closely by Easter.  So there was a lot of celebrating to be done!  We took tons of pictures of all of the events – especially since everyone insists on family pictures at every possible moment that the family is together all in one place at one time.  On the other hand, the D.C. Belchers also came for a visit.  However, I guess my side of the family is not as camera crazy – so we took NONE!  Can you believe that!  Ridiculous.  So beware, Belchers….the next time you come to Texas, you’re gonna see flashing lights every 5 minutes so that you can be forever documented in our Blog!