Richmond parents: be forewarned. Some turn-your-stomach language is involved in this article.
Ever seen the movie Stand By Me? There’s part of the movie where they have a pie eating contest, and one kid barfs, then the rest of the kids in the contest and everyone around them start barfing: it’s a barf-o-rama. 
I experienced a miniature version of this myself yesterday. The perpetrators are pictured here.
I took my two younger kids to the pediatrician because they had been hacking as if they had a pack-a-day cigarette habit, and I was getting pretty concerned. After careful examination, the doctor told us they probably had a little summer cold/virus and gave us a script for antibiotics, which she noted, probably wouldn’t work at this stage of their sickness.
Feeling relieved, and in need of some milk, we headed to our beloved Ukrops. Of course, the kids were instantly hungry so we grabbed each a slice of pizza and snagged a table. That’s when the trouble began.
“Mama, my belly is full!” cried my two-year-old, who hadn’t yet eaten a bite. Her face was pale. Her lip was quivering. I held her close just in time to hear the rumble in her tummy, and felt a warm gush all over the front of my t-shirt and shorts. Her belly suddenly was not full anymore. And I’m pretty sure that part of the contents of her belly landed on the shoes of the nice ladies sitting next to us, who were kind enough to grab us some towels.
There would be no grocery shopping for us. We jetted out the door as quickly as our feet would take us, apologizing profusely to those around us who had suddenly lost their appetites.
As we drove away, she fell asleep. Feeling confident I couuld squeeze in just one more errand, I headed towards the bank. As we rolled away from the drive-through window, my 4-year-old cried, “Mama, my tummy hurts!” and no sooner did he get the sentence out than he hurled all over his car seat, his clothes, and his sleeping sister (who somehow remained asleep). At this point I was hoping for a space ship to come and beam me out of the car and this entire situation. My seven-year-old was yelling: “Mama it smells in here!” He wasn’t kidding.
Hours later, after both kids were scrubbed up and in their jammies, happy, I cleaned the remnants of said barf-o-rama from the backseat of my car, and reflected on the day’s activities with a smile. After all, it coulda been worse. . .it coulda been a three-hurler.
