When your son loses his supper in the middle of the night.

“Mom, I barf all over my Spider-man pillow. All over it Mom, so much barf!”

The barf notification.

I’m a night sleeper, it’s when I like my sleep to occur, and when I try to make my sleep occur… but that phrase will most assuredly make me shoot out of my bed in the midnight hours when I’m fast asleep…

Next to “I did barf already,” the phrase “I’m going to barf” is equally as troublesome. It’s the words that make you race your child to the sink with a superhero ‘Flash like motion.’ You heave him up and over in a panicked choke hold to get it anywhere except for the carpet. It’s like a special parental maneuver I’ve perfected over the past 8 years that does me no good on a real resume.

I sent my son to the bathroom in case round 2 was fiercely on its way, and I went to the bunk bed location to investigate.

It was indeed filled with tiny pieces of hot dog from the supper experience a few hours earlier.

Gross. It never gets less gross. But we do get quicker at the clean up and pretend nothing ever happened here part.

I think the sheer confusion that all parties simultaneously experience is the funniest part of this event.

My son was sleeping peacefully… until he wasn’t.

And then very strangely he found himself face down in his expired dinner. That would be a shocking and confusing experience.

“What is happening? Why is my bed wet? Why are we having hot dogs in the middle of the night?!”

For myself, I was fast asleep as well… until suddenly I wasn’t.

And it wasn’t an alarm clock system where you have a phase in snooze program to alertness.

It’s a ‘great, you were asleep, but now you’re going to have to instantly be alert and engage in a short list of highly alert tasks, like catch any more throw up coming your direction, roll up any roll-able carpets in the path from bedroom to bathroom, and start washing out bed-sheets, changing bed-sheets, changing children clothing, and washing faces.”

Next that follows is bed bowl instruction.

“The popcorn bowl is right beside your head, if you barf in it, you get a prize.. a big prize… no I don’t know what it’ll be yet, but it will be amazing… and then just call me ok? Don’t try to bring it to me and potentially trip halfway over… yell, Mama!! And I’ll get to you…”

The huge pile of rinsed out bed-sheets were going to have a sleepover in the bathtub, scheduled to be sent through the sanitary wash setting as soon as morning arrived.

And finally we all went back to sleep. For a little while at least.

To me, it was just another one of ‘those nights,’ that we had conquered with disinfectant spray and elbow grease against our will.

To him, it might have just felt like a weird dream with a halfway shocking plot twist.

Morning came, and I awoke to a little head by my bed breathing softly in my face. “Mama, where you take my Spider-man pillow to?”

He had zero recollection of the previous nighttime events…

But thank you Lord for clean water, a washing machine, a settled toddler tummy, and a new morning every single day.