At about 12:15 on the day before we were flying away to North Dakota Jonas curled up in my lap and fell asleep. If we were talking about a normal child, we would say, “How sweet!” but we aren’t. This is Jonas, the boy who stopped cuddling at six weeks old because he had more important things to attend to. If Jonas gets cuddly, I know one thing is for sure. The kid is sick. He can be completely unsymptomatic, but I know he’s sick. On the flip side, it doesn’t matter if he is heaving his lunch onto the carpet, until he snuggles, I consider him healthy.

About twenty minutes later, with feelings of dread, I packed him into the car. I needed to drive to my in-laws’ house and stay the night because they live in the same town as the airport and my flight was leaving at six a.m. We made it a total of six miles before the moaning started and Jonas vomited spectacularly all over the backseat of the car. I pulled over at a Burger King and asked him if he wanted a drink. He pathetically moaned that he was hungry, so I purchased a kid’s meal. I offered the drink; he was so weak he dumped it down his front. After toweling him off, I offered the burger; not interested. I offered the fries; no dice. I offered the toy and got a weak smile. “So you just wanted to stop at Burger King for the toy?”

“Yeah.” What do you say to that? After all, the kid was burning up with fever and had just chucked his lunch all over the car. The thing to figure out was weather or not to go home or keep going. Since my tickets were non-refundable, I headed for my in-laws. It’s only an hour away and he can be sick there just as easily as he can be sick at home.

He slept for the majority of the drive, only stopping to puke once. While he dozed fitfully I went through the five stages of grief at lighting speed.

Denial: You know, he is probably just fine. He’s just a pukey kind of kid, he’ll be over this in no time.

Anger: Why does this always happen to me? What am I, a magnet for bad things? Now he’s barfing, but just wait, tomorrow it will be him, Maggie and me stuck in a two foot airplane lavatory going through those little blue puke bags like they’re candy. That’s if they even let us on the plane when they see how disgustingly sick we are.

Bargaining (better known as begging): Ok, God, if you could please just make this all better, I have no problem being sick with the flu for three weeks when we get home, just not on this trip. Please. Please. Pleasepleaseplease.

Depression: I just know we are all going to get this and spend the entire trip sick and I’ll give it to my sister and she’ll be sick on her wedding day. My life sucks.

Acceptance: At this point I managed to stop freaking out and adjust my attitude to the only attitude that can serve a person well in this situation. This is the attitude of BRING IT ON! Because, really, what else can you do? You fire yourself up, tell yourself that you so totally rock and of course you can manage a vomiting, miserable two year old on an airplane for five hours. You can even do it while you are puking at the same time, because you know what? You are that good. You are Super-Mommy. Bring it on! (Cue theme music from Rocky.)

Luckily for me, I never had to find out if I really had that in me. Jonas puked a few more times at my in-laws’ and was happy by bedtime. Maggie and I never caught the amazing six hour flu. We are truly blessed.