My Favorite Word

You may have noticed that I use the word "gross" a lot. That's because there seem to be an above-average number of things in my life that are appropriately described as such.

Let us take, for example, my day with Cubby yesterday.

Cubby has a cold. Not, THANK GOD, the horrible, evil, sucking-the-will-to-live stomach virus that I suffered through, but still. A cold. Colds come with snot, which for babies is not so easy to dispose of. Since they can't just handily blow it into a tissue, you see. No, they instead smear it all over their sheet while they sleep; smear it all over their faces with their hands; shoot it with surprising velocity from their noses in glutinous, horrifying ropes when they sneeze. It is, in a word . . .

Gross.

In addition to the cold, Cubby is teething. Teething means drool. Drool that mixes with the snot and drips all over the place and is . . .

Gross.

Also, in my quest to get the child accustomed to self-feeding food in non-puree form, we've been having some really intense feeding sessions lately. This involves putting various small, soft foodstuffs on his tray that he then smashes in his fist and smears everywhere, thereby creating a really artistic mural of food that is . . .

Gross.

The culmination was dinner last night, at which he was drooling, sneezing snot out of his nose, smearing food around, and THEN (wait for it!) he gagged until he threw up.

GROOOOOOSSSSSS.