Today Amelia is sick. It's been a long today. 4 a.m. The night is not over for me so Monday hasn't started. Amelia is tossing and turning in her bed, clutching Frog. Thank God for her sidekick and accomplice. She draws strength from it. Her own little green superpowers. Although at the moment, green means more. It is the shade of pallor of her beautiful visage. It is the shade that threatens to ooze down her right nostril every two or three sniffles. It is the tint in her oh-too-frequently-changed diapers. My little girl has the flu. Her first flu. How dare a bug upset her so! And I am powerless to quash it. All I can do, relegated to the sidelines, is sit and stare at the two-inch monitor and watch my baby fight her own battle. Tossing, turning, sniffling, coughing. Raging war with microbes in her little organism. She swims across her crib: left to right, to and fro, in a tight little ball then fully stretched out. Yet despite the flurry of activity, somehow, she sleeps. Every ragged breath keeps me up, as surely as if she had cried out for me. The way she did last night, when hand-in-hand, heading towards the bedroom, chatting excitedly with a prized cheerios snack bowl in hand, she turned, puzzled, and questioned me silently as her little stomach heaved. The floodgates opened and out poured her insides. That was not green. Oh my God, no. That was ripe and well beyond. The stench filled the kitchen air, much like the offending vomit filled her mouth. I held Amelia by her hand and placed one hand on her stomach, trying to comfort the pain, encouraging her to finish the smelly job she had started, to rid herself of the offending material inside her. Narrating what was happening to her, wishing I could understand why she needs to feel so miserable so I could explain that this was "normal", give her the vocabulary for this green-in-the-gills moment, I prayed for the fortitude not to sob with her. The pain and fear etched in her little face as the violence of her wretching lifted her off her tippy toes and onto the palm of my hand that was aplying pressure to her sensitive, bloated belly filled me with rage. Why must she go through this? She's so small! Through it all, she leans on me, right little hand curled around my shoulder, gripping my arm, never letting go, never wavering. She is strong. I draw my strength from the knowledge that she can fight her own battles. One bug at a time. After all, she is my little superhero, with her own green sidekick.