Vacation Bible School

Next week, our church will be hosting VBS and I will be teaching the 2nd grade class with Miss J.  I thought I would repost this post from last year's VBS experience.  By the end of the that weekend, every single person in our house had the virus, including Mr. P.  It was a horrific time!  Needless to say, I hope we don't repeat it this year!

The V in VBS Ain't for Vomit!!!

This week we have been enjoying Vacation Bible School at our church.  Since it's 13 miles from my house, I volunteered to help in the nursery so I wouldn't have to make 2 trips each day.  It all started nicely, but then on Tuesday, it happened.  A baby in the nursery vomited.  The lead nursery worker was holding an infant and saying how sweet he was to cuddle with her when BAM...he vomited all OVER her.  I ran and grabbed a can of Lysol in one hand and Clorox anywhere in the other.  The teen worker grabbed paper towels.  We cleaned her up as best we could so she could go home and change.  I then started the sanitation effort.  I say effort, because despite anything I do at this point, the babies are all exposed as are all the nursery workers.  And despite my efforts it is nearly impossible to sanitize an entire nursery, while tending to the remaining 5 babies and toddlers.  I sprayed the carpet with Lysol, put the 9 month old and my 11 month old into exersaucers so they couldn't escape and crawl into the "germ zone."  I got the other babies in another part of the room with toys and then filled the sink with hot soapy water.  I sprayed Lysol on everything in the room just for good measure.  I scrubbed toys. Do you know how long it takes to wash baby Legos, Fisher Price farm and Noah's ark??? Literally hundreds of small toy parts were washed and then sprayed down with disinfectant again.  The next day at VBS we sent another kid home in the kindergarten room.  Of course, that wasn't in my room, I was focused on the toddler that bit 4 times and sort of forgot all about the vomiting.  It seems that toddlers who are at VBS all week and not getting the amount of sleep they need become cannibals.  ;-) Those not protecting the babies from the biter, were very aware that we had another case of the virus.  Craft time was backed up 10 minutes while they cleaned vomit from the floor.  On the way home from VBS, I asked my kids what they learned at VBS and they told me that you can put cat litter on puke and sweep it up.  Not exactly what I had hoped they would learn.  Yesterday, the lead nursery worker's daughter vomited from her classroom all they way to the bathroom.  That took about 30 minutes to clean since it was on carpet.  I know this because my dear Father in Law cleaned it up.  I'm pretty sure that he received sainthood with this task.  Thankfully, the church has a massive steam cleaner that helped in the sanitation effort.  We wished the lead nursery worker luck as she left to take her daughter home.  I got new helpers and we had a pretty good rest of the day in the nursery.  All the babies managed to sleep good the night before and not one child hit or bit.  Around 11:00 the children's pastor brought me bottles of Germ X.  Nothing says love like a free bottle of Germ X.  Wal-Mart was probably concerned when our pastor came and bought them out of Germ X on a quiet Thursday morning.    Around 11:00, the napping babies wake up and are ready for lunch, diaper changes etc.  We all noticed right away that my baby was awake, but quiet.  He didn't smile.  He sat off by himself.  He didn't even play with the balls, his favorite toy ever!  We knew something was up.  We all sat and stared at him waiting for him to spew.  After all, it's apparent that this virus is spreading rapidly and it had begun in this nursery.  The rest of the time at VBS he wasn't his normal self, but no spewing happened.  He did finally play a little and even smile a bit.  We decided that maybe he just didn't get his full morning nap.    After his afternoon nap, he was his normal smiley self.  I thought to myself, "Oh Good!  We escaped the tummy bug"..UNTIL 4 am.  And at 4 am, he finally spewed.  I was awakened from a dead sleep with the nearly silent vomit of a sleeping baby.  A sleeping baby in my bed, of course.  I flew into action.  I turned on the lights and screamed, "We have vomiting!!!"  Mr. P flew out of bed, grabbed towels and washcloths.  He is amazingly quick and agile at 4 am.  Just remember, though,the key word is "vomit."  Any other word you say at 4 am will only result in further snoring on his part.  I got the baby cleaned up and was rocking him.  Mr. P was attempting to go back to sleep.  I looked at my poor sick Baby C.  Kind of like a cat hacking up a hairball, his little tummy was visibly lurching.  His face was pale and grimaced.  He would fall asleep, only to wake with this petrified look on his sweet baby face.  Around 5 am the last of his stage 3 Gerber Nutritious Dinner came up.  ( I kid you not, Gerber actually prints nutritious dinner on the jar!)  After that he slept until about 8:15.  So far we have only had one instant of dry heaving, but no more puke yet.  I'm taking full advantage of the lull to wash bedding and get it back on the beds before the next wave hits.  Miss A is headed to a youth conference tonight so we are praying that she doesn't come down with the virus while she is there.  Mr. P is on call in case I come down with it or the other kids come down with it while they are at VBS this morning.  My morning plans include getting the bedding back in his crib and my bed and if time permits, a bleach dip for the entire household.  What do your morning plans include this lovely Friday morn? Does anyone have hints on how to dip my entire household in bleach in  record time?
Blessings,

Mrs. P