Laughing Cow

No, I don't mean the cheese...I mean my daughter's reflection on her mother.

Yesterday morning, as she is emptying the contents of her stomach onto me, my hair, and my bathrobe, I did something that filled her both with hatred and panic.

I laughed.

Not only because I am a Bad, Naughty Mommy, however...

You see, I inherited one of the world's worst qualities from my dad: Nervous Laughter. It's awful. Whenever I'm upset by something, nervous about something, feeling especially stressed or out of control, I laugh. Giggle. Chuckle. Sometimes chortle. And it's mortifying.

Particularly when your little girl is already terrified by her stomach heaves, the quantity of what appears to be wallpaper paste emerging from her mouth and nose, and the resultant inability to breathe through either her mouth or nose.

When all was said and done, I'm pretty sure she was thinking to herself, "You COW!"

Laughing cow, that is. Because that's what I would have been thinking.

Thank heavens she has a) an incredibly limited vocabularly, and b) a crappy short-term memory. I only hope it hasn't traumatized her enough that it becomes part of her long-term memory, because when she's 14 and has both the words and the flu, she WILL turn to me and say, "I remember when I was a terrified little girl puking my guts up, and you laughed...just like this. You COW!"

Just watch. It'll happen.

Oh, and maybe I was laughing - just a little - because I was glad it wasn't me, Bad, Naughty Mommy that I am. But that's another story.