A Valiant Effort

As you may have heard, we've had a slew of sickness passing through our household. Max was down with a fever for several days, but mostly just seemed to have a very nasty cold.

Among Max's quirks are the facts that he doesn't like to cough (something which is difficult when one does, in fact, HAVE A COUGH) and that he is very gaggy (something which is magnified when obscene quantities of mucus and drainage and phlegm are, in reality, DROWNING ONE'S UVULA).

Gulp. I gagged a bit myself just typing that sentence and thinking about all that goo. Sorry. I'm just trying to set the stage for today's story. Ahem. Moving on!

To give him credit, Max has matured to the point where he has better control over his gagging. Well, actually not over gagging per se, but over his gagging to the point of puking. When The Look comes over his face, we can sometimes shout "No Puking!!" and he will actually stop (and then do a big gulp). Sometimes he can't stop, but he will run to the sink first, which we consider no small triumph.

So anyway, that nasty cold led to frequent gagging and puking. And sneezing! And Max did a great job of running to the sink when he was near it and needed to puke....but he forgot that it is dangerous to sneeze when one's face is so close to a counter's hard edge.

He sneezed his face right onto the edge of the counter.

More than once.

Poor guy. As if he wasn't miserable enough, he now has a split lip, too.

It was a valiant effort, though.