When even God can't make you smell good

I have been a mom for five years now. Five non-blogging years. So I have been contemplating lately starting to blog about those great (or not so great) moments that occurred during those five years that I didn't get to write about.

Then Meghan suggested that she might start a carnival called "How I Would Have Blogged It." I'm totally on board with her (because she is fabulous and all kinds of bloggy-wonderful), so eventually I hope this will be part of one of her big ideas. But for now, this is just one of Instamom's Great Moments in Mommying.

Warning: A lot of my "great" moments involve bodily fluids....
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Shortly after MiniMe was born, one of my dearest friends asked me to be godmother to her first daughter. I was over-the-moon flattered and excited. I absolutely adore her and her kids, so to this day it feels quite special that I am connected to them in a way that is more than just "Oh, that's my mom's friend."

The Hubs occasionally likes to make baked goods for the family on weekend mornings. Since even the treats in my house tend to be organic and whole wheat, I usually give in and let him make whatever sugar-laden boxed delicacy strikes his fancy. On this particular morning, since we would be driving close to two hours and sitting through a long church ceremony, he decided the kids deserved chocolate chip muffins.

We loaded up The Hubs's truck and headed out. To this day, I cannot remember why we took the truck since even in the days before you had to sell a child to buy a tank of gas we were disinclined to spend the money to fill up his behemoth. I only mention this because the truck just didn't have the nice smooth suspension of my Passat. (I know, you totally see where this is going because I am ruining the story with my foreshadowing, but I am an English teacher and I like my literary devices, m'kay?)

The Eldest Child, who was just past his fifth birthday zonked out on the way down. So when we arrived--a whole ten minutes before we were supposed to, rock on Instafamily!--I extracted The Eldest Child from the car. He started to whine that his shoe was untied, so I bent over and tied it for him. Then he started to cry. With the hindsight I have now, I know that unexplained crying is the first sign that The Eldest Child is going to throw up--great moments, I tell ya, lots and lots of great moments. But back then, back before I knew better, I just figured he was sleepy and a swooped him into my arms.

Just in time for him to throw up. Chocolate-chip muffin throw up. In my hair. Down my back. All the way to my ankles. Onto my shoes. On my white sweater.

This was the first time we found out that The Eldest Child tends to get a little car sick. Funny how we always find out the important stuff after the fact and the hard way.

To this day, I don't want to know what the poor old woman thought when she walked into the women's bathroom at a church and found me leaning over a toilet stroking a sick child's head and The Hubs, holding a two-month-old baby, using cheap brown paper towels to try to scrub brown vomit off of my white sweater, my pant leg, and at that very moment, my butt. Whatever it was, it caused her to immediately turn around and walk the other direction. No.Questions.Asked.

After cleaning me up, The Hubs fled from the women's bathroom to inform my friend that an immediate trip to the nearest store would be necessary to get replacement clothes. But oh no, she was having none of that. The closest store was a Target at least 15 minutes away and packed on a Saturday. We had about 30 seconds before the priest was coming in. She snatched her mother's cardigan to cover the mess on my shoulder and back, then informed me in no uncertain terms that my vomit-splattered butt would be in that pew for the entire ceremony.

The cardigan. The yellow, green, and orange hand-knit gem that really belonged on someone forty years older than me living forty years ago. The cardigan with the puffy sleeves. The cardigan that I am recorded wearing for posterity because no sooner did I sit my subservient butt in that pew than my friend informed me that I was sitting just a few people away from the professional photographer she had hired for the occassion. Yipp-freakin'-ee.

I love her mother. I hate her fashion choice that day. Damn sweater.

We managed to get through the ceremony without incident and stopped by Target on our way to her mom's house afterward since, after the bathroom clean up, everyone except the baby was wearing vomit.

When we finally arrived, her mother discreetly bagged the sweater and placed it outside until it could be burned washed. It was that bad. It was the smell that took on a life of it's own. We couldn't even put our dirty clothes in the truck. They rode in the bed of the truck on the way home. That bad.

With the vomiting incident seemingly behind us, I tried to mesh seamlessly with the guests as though nothing had ever happened. The conversation I unknowingly walked into? The one that is permanently burned into my memory?

Guest 1: Oh my God, what was that stench during the whole ceremony?
Guest 2: You smelled it, too?
Guest 1: How could you not smell that?
Guest 2: I figured someone just needed to change their baby.
Guest 1: That was no baby. That was awful. *Turning to me* You were next to us, did you smell it?
Me: Smell? Um...oh, the baby is crying. I think he needs to be nursed.

And so, I quietly left the conversation. Because that smell...that would be me.