2 a.m.

"We're pretty good team," is what goes through my head. Weird thought to occur at 2 a.m. while you and your husband are managing a vomiting child, but perhaps every thought is weird at 2 a.m.

I hadn't been sleeping well that night. Neither of us had, I think, though there were no obvious outward signs of trouble brewing in the next room. I got up to use the bathroom and came back to find the light on in the kiddo's room. I altered course and found my husband speaking soothing words and holding a bowl for a puking child.

Rarely a dull moment around here.

It had taken a few seconds for my husband to go from checking on the coughing sounds from the next room to dashing to the kitchen and back for a worthy receptacle. Sheets needed changing, the carpet alongside the bed needed cleaning, and one loyal friend in the shape of a stuffed rabbit was going to need a bath. And in the middle of it was a very bummed out kid perched on a bunk bed clutching a plastic bowl, in the mush pot, so to speak.

That's the part that always kills me about moments like this. It's not just the parenting part but the logistics.

I put a hand on my son's back and looked to my husband. "What do you need?" I asked.

"Let's get him to the bathroom."

So I mopped the kid with a towel, Shawn ferried him to a room with linoleum on the floor instead of carpet. I gathered up the sheets, did a quick job on the floor, and hauled off a load to the laundry. Meanwhile Shawn talked the kiddo through and wiped his face. I sat on the bathroom floor while an exhausted child crawled into my lap in a heap. Shawn fetched a cup of water. "What do you need?" he asked.

"Clean sheets on the bed."

So Shawn made up a fresh bed and bathed the friend rabbit. The boy curled in my lap and said, "What about Disneyland?" We were due to leave for this must-anticipated family trip in about 36 hours from this moment on the bathroom floor. What do you say? You say things that basically shake out to "we'll see" and "hopefully in the morning" and you kind of hate yourself for saying it, but there you are on the bathroom floor at 2 in the morning with a sick kid and today that's life.

We got him back into a clean bed, checked temperatures, rubbed backs, held the plastic bowl again. And what I thought was, "We're a pretty good team."

This wasn't one of the scary ones. You know, one of those parenting moments that come with high fevers or blood or pain; the ones where you and your spouse are looking at each other with that "oh shit" expression on your faces. This one was a normal, run-of-the-mill, this-too-shall-pass, family incident. In the middle of the goop and tears and mess, I thought, "Eh, we got this."

Good to know.