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The following is a story of Voltron I made up based on the T.V. cartoon Voltron by World Events Productions. I did not have World Events Productions' permission to do the story and therefore it does not have World Events Productions' endorsement.
Allura woke up. It was just after midnight and Mark was bawling. Keith wasn’t there. He was doing his first night of night patrol. He did that every week for two nights in a row. It was something he started once he was king because he felt it was his duty to share the burden for that. Before that it had been something that Coran practically always did.
Allura got up to check on Mark.
“Ugh!” she said as she picked him up. Her little year and a half-old son had thrown up.
Allura set him down to stand in the bathtub that was in a bathroom in her bedroom. He didn’t like it at all when she left him there and bawled even more loudly.
Allura quickly changed out of her pajama’s that had gotten a little vomit on them. Then she just as quickly grabbed some baby wipes and first began clearing the chunks of vomit off of Mark’s bedding and put it into a plastic bag. After all, she had to get it cleaned up sometime before she put him back to bed so she thought it best to let him wait out the worst before he was changed rather than afterwards. Then she pulled the blanket and sheets off the bed and began rinsing out some of the rest of the stain in a sink in the bathroom. She had two sinks, one outside the bathroom and one inside. She used the one inside so Mark could see her and she could see him.
Then she used baby wipes to clean chunks of vomit off Mark’s pajamas before she slipped them off and rinsed them off in the sink as well, and she put them in a rolling laundry cart along with the blanket and sheets.
After that she put fresh sheets and a blanket on Mark’s crib. And finally, she changed Mark’s diaper and put a clean pair of pajamas on him. Then she lifted him out of the tub and laid him on her bed where she then nursed him. When Mark had had his fill, she laid him down to sleep in his crib before she went back to bed herself.
Shortly after 2 a.m., Allura awoke to Mark’s crying again. That time he had vomit in his hair. And so they went through the same process: putting Mark in the tub, removing the sheets and blanket from his bed and cleaning them somewhat before replacing them with clean sheets and a blanket, taking off Mark’s pajamas and cleaning them somewhat, and putting all the dirty laundry in the rolling cart. She didn’t want to give him a bath. After all, he could just throw up again and need another bath and she just didn’t feel like doing that. Instead she took baby wipes and started pulling on small groups of strands of his already thick longish black hair to remove the vomit.
“Ish, ish, ish, . . .” she kept saying with every pull. This rhythmic sound had a calming effect on Mark, and he quit crying. And so, he didn’t mind at all to have his hair pulled at.
Then Allura went through the process of changing Mark, putting on another pair of clean pajamas on him, nursing him off to sleep, and putting him to bed in his crib.
Allura looked at the now pile of clothes in the laundry cart. Nanny had plenty to do without having to mess around with that and Allura certainly didn’t want to hear complaints about it from Nanny later, so she decided to take the clothes down to the laundry room herself. She wouldn’t be gone long and Mark would be OK even if he did wake up. She wheeled the laundry out of her room and down the hallway until she came to the flight of stairs.
She thought wearily to herself How does Nanny do this? Surely she doesn’t use the stairs. Allura had never paid much attention as to how Nanny got the laundry downstairs. She wished she had asked the mice, but they had been nowhere to be seen. After Mark had been born, they avoided her whenever he started wailing. She had been in the laundry room a few times as a small girl and she knew how to run the machines. But, she had no idea what Nanny’s trick was for getting the laundry downstairs in the first place.
Allura felt exasperated as she looked down the long flight of steps. Then she had an idea. “Oops!” she said as she turned her head away and purposely pushed the cart down the steps, pretending as though it was an accident. The cart banged down the steps and somehow didn’t lose its contents until it hit the bottom. Allura looked at the mess at the bottom of the stairs and said aloud, “Well, I doubt she does it that way, but it works.” She half expected Keith to suddenly show up since he was on night patrol, but he didn’t.
As Allura ran down the stairs, she thought I wish the stairs had banisters. It’d be so much faster!
At the bottom of the stairs, she quickly gathered all the laundry and put it back in the surprisingly unharmed cart. Then she rushed the cart to the laundry room and quickly started loading the machines. It took up 2 loads. Then she hurried out of the room, leaving the cart behind, and ran up the stairs, taking 2 steps at a time, to get back to Mark. When she was back, he was still sleeping soundly and she went to bed.
Shortly after 4 a.m., Allura was awakened by Mark’s cries again. She went to his crib and he looked fine. So she rubbed his back so he’d go back to sleep. And he was all ready to accommodate until Allura came across something wet. He had thrown up again! And it was in his hair again! She lifted him out of the crib and set him standing up in the bathtub again. Mark wailed. He didn’t want to go through all that again, he just wanted to go back to sleep.
Allura went through the process of changing Mark’s sheets and blanket again and slipping Mark out of his pajamas. Then she lifted him out of the tub to go change him. He was quite smelly that time. As she laid him down on his back, the contents of his diaper sloshed right up his back.
“Ohhhh,” complained Allura. She took his diaper off, cleaned up his bottom, and immediately put him back in the tub standing up. Mark of course continued to cry. She cleaned off his back with a diaper wipe, and then turned on the water and added soap. Mark settled down and enjoyed his bath. Allura quick grabbed the soiled mats she had changed him on and scrubbed them in the toilet so they’d come clean later in the wash. Then she laid them on top of his pajamas on the floor.
After Mark’s bath, she put another clean pair of pajamas on him and then nursed him while lying on her bed. Then he started to throw up again! Allura lifted him off the bed just as he had started, and then he didn’t throw up as much. The poor baby prince had swallowed some of it instead. Fortunately she always laid a towel on the bed whenever she nursed him, and she quickly pulled the towel off the bed. None of the vomit had soaked through to the bed, and it was only on the towel. She left the towel there crumpled on the floor as she grabbed a diaper wipe and cleaned Mark’s face and a spot the shoulder of his pajamas.
By then Allura finally realized that even her breast milk was upsetting Mark’s stomach. So she decided not to breast feed him anymore until his stomach was better. She sat with Mark in a glider rocker that she had put in her room after Mark was born. Then she rocked him to sleep and laid him in his crib before going back to bed herself.
Next, Allura was awakened shortly after 8 a.m. by Mark’s crying again. She went to him and was very happy to see that he hadn’t thrown up. She lifted him out of the crib and changed his diaper. The she let him walk around with just his diaper while she thought about what she could give him to drink. She had had stomach flu before and knew from experience that even drinking just water would cause her to throw up. So she didn’t even want to try that with Mark. But she did have an idea of what to try. Since the time the boys (Voltron force) had come to Arus, Hunk had had a chance to acquire an assortment of different soda pops from Earth and had them on Arus. There on Arus, through scientific analysis, the formulas of each kind of soda Hunk had was discovered and replicated. Allura had a stash of an assortment of the glass bottles in her room. She was thinking back to what Hunk said was a soda that settled his stomach whenever he had stomach flu. 7UP. That was it! He said he used 7UP!
Allura pulled out a bottle of 7UP from under her bed. She hadn’t opened any of the bottles since she had gotten them, and then staring at the bottle she realized she didn’t have on of those gadgets Hunk called a bottle opener. In dismay she wondered how she’d get the bottle open .She quickly glanced around the room and her eyes stopped at the dresser. Then her face brightened. Yes, that may work! She tucked the top of the bottle under a handle of the dresser and then pried up on the bottle. To her relief it worked and the cap popped off. She gave Mark a sip of the soda and he drank it eagerly. She gave him more of the drink until she decided he had had enough. Then she let him wander in the room while she tried to figure out how to best try to put the cap back on the bottle so that at least something small couldn’t fall into it from the air. Just after she had managed to force the cap back on over the bottle to her satisfaction, she heard a disturbing sound from Mark. She looked over at him and he was standing on a rug over by her door. It sounded as though the sound was being caused by an occurrence in his diaper. Then Allura knew what was going on and waited for him to finish his job. When she thought he was finished, she walked over to the door to get him to change him. Then she saw that a little of the brown runny contents of his diaper had escaped and was on the rug. She picked Mark up and rushed him to the bathroom, grabbing a scented diaper bag along the way. She was about to set him in the tub when she saw that she hadn’t drained the water from when Mark had a bath. Allura let out a groan of disappointment. Then she opened the plug, and her and Mark waited for the water to slowly drain from the tub. After it had drained, she put Mark in the tub and he began to cry loudly. Allura took the diaper off and a little of the contents had spilled into the tub. She spilled a little more while putting the diaper in the scented diaper bag, but didn’t get anything on the outside of the bag itself. Then she used diaper wipes to clean the spots off the inside of the tub and wiped Mark’s backside and legs. She neatly tied the diaper bag closed and carried it and little naked Mark out of the bathroom and over to the spot where she usually changed Mark. She dropped the scented diaper bag with its contents down a garbage shoot that was right there. Then for a moment her thoughts drifted and she wished to herself that the room also had a laundry shoot. It would have saved her a lot of time and effort considering what she had gone through with the rolling laundry cart in the middle of the night. Allura finished wiping Mark’s bottom, dropped the dirty wipes down the shoot, and put a clean diaper on him. Then she set Mark down and washed her hands before putting some clothes on him. She didn’t put any socks or shoes on him like she normally did; predicting that she’d be changing diarrhea diapers for the rest of the day. And she was right about that. Mark was wearing his third outfit by the time of their evening meal at the castle!
By Sheila Bliss
Commentary:
All that happened with Allura and Mark basically happened to my son Kyle and I back on April 19, 2002. That was Fri., the night of the first scheduled chat I arranged through KAEX. Kyle at that time was one and a half years old as I described Mark as being in the story. Kyle’s hair isn’t black or very thick though. It’s brownish, reddish, blondish (if you can imagine that—it’s been called all 3 colors by different people) and curly at the ends like a Gerber baby. There’s a pic on his site at http://coolkyle.8k.com.
Yup, it started out with Kyle getting sick. Everything pretty much happened from there just as the story describes at about the same times as in the story.
I purposely thought of a reason that Keith wouldn’t be there to help because my husband, Steve, wasn’t there to help me. He goes to seminary school during the week and stays there and doesn’t come home until the weekend. And, that weekend happened to be a weekend that he didn’t come home.
Nope, I don’t really have a rolling laundry cart. I just threw that into the story because for some reason it came to mind and I thought it’d be interesting. I did haul laundry over to my parents’ house that night though in an ordinary laundry basket at about the time described in the story, mostly because of changing Kyle’s bedding that filled it up. And I did have to haul it down a flight of stairs, walk for about half a block, and then haul it down another flight of stairs – so stairs were involved. Oh, and I don’t have mice running around that I can inquire information from either.
I don’t remember for sure if I’ve got the part from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. quite right. Seems like there was another time that Kyle woke up in that time frame and it was then that the poor kid swallowed some of his own vomit (Yuck!), and not actually right after I had finally figured out that even breast milk was upsetting his stomach. I didn’t get the story finished before I started to forget parts of it toward the end.
Yup, I still nursed Kyle when he was a year and a half old. Only I didn’t usually do it on our bed. I usually nursed him while lying down on our couch, and yes I did have a towel down when I nursed him and surprisingly the couch didn’t get anything on it when he threw up – just the towel did.
Nope, I don’t have a glider rocking chair, just a regular wooden frame rocking chair with arms. But, I figured Allura would have a glider rocker.
Yup, went through the whole thing with soda pop, except that unlike Allura I was pretty confident that 7UP would settle Kyle’s stomach just based on my own personal experience, but like her I didn’t want to try water based on personal experience. Nope, I wasn’t using soda in glass bottles. The 7UP I was using was in aluminum cans. I went with the glass bottles on Arus because I figured it made more sense to have a stash of soda in that form because it tastes better from glass bottles anyway. Fortunately I happened to know from experience that using a dresser handle works for prying off bottle caps.
Yup, also had the experience with Kyle in his diaper by the door as described in the story (except I wasn’t messing around with a soda bottle and bottle cap) and a little of the contents of his diaper did get on a rug. And, yes, there was still water in the bathtub when I went to put him in there and we had to wait for it to drain out (that drain is slow!)
A couple other tidbits from the real life story are that I always change Kyle on the floor, and I don’t have a garbage shoot. Kyle’s dirty diapers go into flip top diaper pail.
And that’s about it. I thought it all was quite an “interesting” ordeal to go through so I wanted to share it.
Author -- Sheila Bliss, based on the previous creation of Voltron by World Events Productions]
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