I don't know if we'll be convincing anyone to come back to our place for Thanksgiving dinner next year

Thanksgiving, a few short hours before all hell broke loose

Wednesday

Things started innocently enough. Around 2am on Wednesday morning, we awoke to the sound of Sadie crying -- as she sometimes does if she has a nightmare or is just out of sorts. I sent Scott in to put her back to sleep, and a few moments later I heard:

"AMANDA I NEED YOU."

I came in to see a miserable baby, covered in puke from head to toe. I changed her clothes and diaper while Scott changed out the dirty crib sheet and her blanket for clean spares; we briefly debated what might be the problem, and I remembered that two days earlier at the indoor playroom, I'd caught her licking plastic balls in the ball pit. A stomach bug seemed the likely culprit. We soothed her, gave her a pacifier, put her down and went back to bed.

A few minutes later, this process was repeated all over again. From that point on we resigned ourselves to a sleepless night. Sadie was up every fifteen minutes, then every twenty, then finally only every hour. (We stopped trying to clean her up pretty quickly -- what's the point of mopping up infant puke at 3am when you know it'll be making a reappearance the minute you leave the room?)

And we seriously discussed canceling Thanksgiving. This, we worried, would be disastrous. Not only did we have his parents, my parents, my sister and her husband, and my elderly grandparents coming over, all with dishes of their own, but our house was packed to the rafters with food. We'd bought a deep fryer, for Christ's sake. There was no contingency plan for shifting the holiday somewhere else -- if it didn't happen at our house, it probably wasn't going to happen.

Thursday

Luckily by 9am, Sadie seemed largely over her illness. She was tired and not very hungry, but her mood was fine. We spoke with her doctor. "Yup, sounds like a stomach bug," he said.

"Is she contagious?"

"Well, could be, but chances are that whatever virus she's fighting, you've already had at some point in your life. You'll probably be fine."

We consulted with everyone in the family, and the consensus was, "Don't cancel Thanksgiving -- we'll just keep the baby at a distance."

"No problem -- she'll probably be asleep by the time you all arrive, anyway."

She wasn't, of course. And naturally, people wanted to hold her and snuggle her. She's going through an especially cute phase right now in which she wants to hug and snuggle everyone, and come on -- are you going to reject a fourteen month old baby's hug, you heartless bastard? I fucking dare you. So she did a lot of hugging, and then passed out, and dinner proceeded well without incident.

Better than well, actually -- it was great. Scott deep-fried a turkey for the first time this year, and after all of my worrying (that we were going to start a gas fire and burn the house down because they showed it on the news and BOILING OIL IS NOTHING TO MESS AROUND WITH, SCOTT, SO STOP MAKING JOKES ABOUT DEEP FRYING COOKIES JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT), the end result was a flawless, juicy, garlic butter-infused bird. My butternut squash casserole and creamed spinach were well received, my mother-in-law's legendary stuffing was as big a hit as ever, and the rest of the family did a heroic job of supplying rolls, pie, homemade cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and everything else we had no time to put together on our own.

We intentionally made and requested too much of everything, the point being to have enough leftovers for everyone. Not a single party walked out the door without a shopping bag of packed-full Tupperware at the end of the night. Our own refrigerator was stuffed so full that we were storing leftovers in the crisper and on the butter shelf. We made plans to hit the market the next day for lettuce and tomatoes so we could eat turkey sandwiches, and envisioned grand plans for eating stuffing for breakfast four days in a row before finally, reluctantly beginning our unavoidable post-Thanksgiving diet.

Friday

We were not as hungry as we'd imagined we'd be. That feeling of fullness continued for me all day, and after a plate of leftovers for dinner I was actually left feeling...kind of gross. The thought of dessert was not appealing, but there was so much food in the house (even after our cleaning lady came and took an entire pumpkin pie home with her) that I ate a couple of cookies, just to clean out some space.

By bedtime Friday night, my stomach was in knots. "I think I might be getting sick," I told Scott, then went to sleep and hoped for the best. The best did not come. It was a long night. I spent most of it in the bathroom and shivering under the covers on the couch with a wastebasket next to me. Two thoughts carried me through:

Thought #1: At least I'm not going to gain any weight this weekend.

Thought #2: When Scott gets up, I am going back to bed and claiming a sick day.

At 6am, he staggered into the living room and looked at me. "What, exactly, were you feeling last night?" he asked.

"Stomach pain...and then nausea."

He sighed, closed his eyes, groaned softly, and went back to bed.

So much for claiming a sick day.

Saturday

This day is largely a blur. Here are a couple of snapshots:

7am: I text my sister to warn her that whatever Sadie had was catching. She reports back that she has already been up barfing all night, thank you very much, so I can take my warning and shove it.

9am: I'm on the couch, willing myself to move, staring dully at the television. Scott's lying on Sadie's play mat on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. Sadie's crawling around cheerfully. "This is what it must be like for babies whose parents are crackheads," Scott says.

10am: Both of our babysitters have politely declined our pleas to come over and take care of Sadie while we lock ourselves in the bedroom. My mom has offered to come over and help, but you can tell she's hoping we'll tell her not to bother. Instead, we put Sadie down for a forced nap and struggle back into bed for another hour.

12pm: I'm not longer throwing up, but I have a fever and have wrapped myself in blankets. Scott emerges from the bedroom in sweatpants and a hoodie, with the hood around his ears.

12:30pm: I feed Sadie the only lunch I can prepare without losing it: cut-up grapes, a slice of cheese and cheerios. So much for leftovers.

1pm: The room fills with the smell of poop, as Sadie smiles brightly. Scott and I look at each other. He says softly, "I can't. I just...can't. Please don't make me." I get changing duty instead.

2pm: From Scott's mother's house comes the report that her husband is the latest casualty.

3pm: Repeated calls to my parents reassure me that neither they nor my grandparents have exhibited any signs of illness, thank goodness. Scott now has the fever, although mine has broken and I'm starting to feel better.

6:30pm: At long last Sadie is down for bed, and we have returned to some semblance of feeling human again. Every time we open the refrigerator to see the tubs and tubs of leftovers, we groan and shut the door again. Instead Scott brings home Chicken McNuggets and fries, which we pick at.

7pm: One final round of calls and text messages reveals that yes, my mother and father are now both sick, and so is my sister's husband, which means that the only Thanksgiving attendees who didn't get ill were my 90 year old grandparents -- who apparently are also superheroes. "I know you feel bad now, but it passes quickly!" we tell everyone, in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the fact that they spent their holiday in a germ-infested house of horrors and will probably never be able to look at stuffing again.

Sunday

Feeling much better. Only...

Those damn leftovers.

Screw it. Tonight we're ordering Italian.