The efficacy of a mother should never be overlooked.

Yesterday was my wife’s birthday. My daughter kicked off the celebration around 12:30 AM by projectile vomiting on her. Happy birthday, Mommy!

But here’s the thing:

When it comes to a sick little girl in the middle of the night, my wife is a freakin’ super hero.

First, she somehow made it into our daughter’s room quickly enough to be vomited on. While I slept peacefully, unaware that Clara was about to explode, my wife had somehow detected that there was a problem and leapt into action faster than I find imaginable.

This is the same woman who crawls out of bed every morning with the pace of a disabled snail.  But when our daughter is in need, she dons her proverbial red cape and moves faster than a speeding bullet.

After suffering the indignity of my daughter’s projectile vomiting, she called me into the room to help. I stumbled from bed and staggered into the room, barely aware that I was even awake. She handed me the kid and told me to hold her while she went to work.

And went to work she did. My daughter had managed to vomit in her crib, on her pajamas, in her hair and into the small crib full of dolls beside her crib (a most unfortunate bit of targeting). While I was still wiping sleep from my eyes and regaining my wits, Elysha had removed the contaminated items from the room, changed the sheets, sanitized every square inch of the crib and changed Clara’s pajamas.

She was like a whirlwind.

This is the same woman who can put an object down on a counter or table and never see or move it again. This is the same woman who will collect enough bottles and tubes on the top of our sink that I sometimes mistake it for a shelf of products at the local pharmacy.

She is not the most minimalist, organized, put-your-stuff-away woman in the world, but when it comes to the possibility of an especially foul germ coming in contact with our daughter, she is second to none when it comes to eradicating it.

I’m tell you, she’s a freakin’ super hero.

Had I been alone, I probably would have stripped Clara down to her diaper, washed her down with a moist towelette and brought her into our bed, which would have been exceedingly unfortunate considering she vomited again an hour later.

The efficacy of a mother should never be overlooked.

It was an inauspicious beginning to my wife’s birthday.