When we went to get our little Judah Buddha this morning, he greeted us with his normal huge smile. And he was covered in vomit. Dried vomit.

Which means he threw up sometime in the night, all alone, with no one to help him. And then he went back to sleep on his vomit-covered pillow. Needless to say, I felt horrible.

After my husband and I did the double-team cleanup, I asked him, “Do you feel guilty for not hearing him last night?” And he said, “No. He was smiling.”

I still felt guilty. So I called my mom. “Oh that happens,” she said. “If he really wanted you to hear him, he would’ve cried loud enough. He was probably tired and just went back to sleep.”

Ahh, that did the trick to abolish my mommy guilt. Try it–all you have to do is ring up a Baby Boomer to get a little dose of guilt squashing. And if that doesn’t work, call someone your grandma’s age.

—

Which makes me recall the time I asked my grandma how she found the time to make dinner with two toddler sons.

“Oh I just put them in their playpen out in the backyard,” she said.

“But Grandma, you lived  in Rochester, NY. It was probably freezing.”

“They were wearing jackets.”