Silence does it for me, too. Most of Aaron’s toys make noise of some sort, so when he’s quiet, he’s getting into something.
Robin
mom i think i need stiches
or
silence leading to mother screaming ‘what pills did you take, sara?!’
yeah thats what my mothers two worst phrases are
Another vote for silence, even at 9 months it indicates danger.
As a child I often did the ‘Dad I’m going… and promptly vomit all over dad’. Most memorable occasion was on the bus to school camp, my entire class saw me and when we had to draw pictures of our journey everyone drew me throwing up on dad.
Aw, she’s so proud of herself…I’m surprised the cat’s not purple.
She’s going to be a decorator for her generation’s “Trading Spaces” just you wait and see.
We don’t have kids, but dogs. Dogs who, when they’re feeling sick, don’t see any reason to leave the coziness of the bed. SO they’ll stand up with convulsive sides and start making pre-vomit hurking sounds. That’s where we’re up, out the door with our hairy armfuls, and trying to hold them outside to throw up–they always want to come back inside immediately. Whee! Nothing like being bare-assed naked in the yard holding onto your dog while it vomits. Yeah, it’s a rock-n-roll lifestyle.
Since my son suffered from an very light gag reflex and I could literally hear a noise in his throat ( kinda clicking, hard to describe) if he was going to hurl, I could move faster than the speed of vomit and catch it a microsecond before it would spew.
That and the dog about to hurl. You’ve never seen two people go from dead sleep to grabbing a 90# nearly gacking dog and drag her to the bathroom to puke on the tile instead of the bed, comforter or carpet.
Good heavens, check out the grin of self-satisfaction on the child’s face! honestly, I think they’re all out there to kill us.
Really.
That’s why we’re stickin’ to parenting dogs. At least we can crate 'em when they misbehave. 
Hee.
Elly
Yep, that’s one way in which dogs are superior to kids - they give ample warning when they’re about to lose it.
Although I once had a dog who liked the “I wanna go out!” “I wanna come in!” “Now I wanna go out!” “No, I think I wanna come in!” game.
Occasionally when he got tired of being ignored (I guess something outside really, really needed barking at) he would fake the “I’m gonna throw up” routine because he knew that was the surest way to get out the door in a hurry. We would never call his bluff.
Either the dreaded Thump! of a body hitting the floor (thankfully very rare), or the parental ESP of the Something Is Going On Silence (rather common).
In the same vein as tanookie’s massacre, my most notable SIGOS situation was one evening where me and the missus were reading in the living room while my kid was in my “den” playing computer games. After a while, we notice that the game wasn’t making any sounds, and all we heard was the SIGOS. I get up to check, and find out that my kid had (a) discovered a red felt-tipped permanent marker pen in the room, and (b) had scribbled all over the computer and monitor with it. Took a half-hour to clean that up, along with some marker remover fluid from Home Depot, but even now you can see tinges of red in some of the nooks and crannies…
After a particularly successful party, with a lot of house guests, my sister, a friend and I all ended up sleeping in the baby’s room. She was delighted to have people with her when she woke up (albeit sleeping people), and was quite happy to play quietly for several hours. She got bored when she ran out of lipstick to decorate us, herself, the walls and furniture with.
Tanookie clearly your child needs to read Harold and the Purple Crayon
Simply outstanding pictures. What a satisfied little imp. I, too, am surprised the cat made it through unpurpled.
I’m a little surprised at the quantity of vomit stories…is it that common in young kids for no apparent reason? I don’t remember vomiting that easily when I was young.
IME, yes. It doesn’t take too much to upset a young tummy. Sometimes a little bounce on the bed or a hearty cry is enough to make dinner come back up the wrong way, and then you’re left outside at 11:00pm at night, flushing warm upchuck off the bedsheets…
Most kids have a pretty sensitive gag reflex when they are very young. I read somewhere that this is helpful for them since they lack the ability and presence of mind to expel things on their own - theory is that it is better to vomit than choke to death. Also kids tend to not be able to recognize the feeling that their stomach is sick until right when they are about to hurl.
It rather depends on the child. My brother throws up quite easily, whereas (according to my mother) I didn’t have a good hurl until I was about 9, and the experience freaked me right out.
The entire thread has me shaking and wheezing with contained laughter in my cube. I so need to telecommute.
We only have one and she is only 10 months. She is usually a great little girl, plays quietly all the time so the quiet doesn’t scare me. Last night did. For some unknown reason at 3:30 AM my wife and I are raised out of a deep sleep with just a horrible blood curdling scream from the babies room. Fly out of bed and dash toward the babies room as the screaming stops. Get to her crib and turn on the little night light and she is fast asleep, sleeping like a baby should. Damn, my heart was pounding. Could not go back to sleep. So today has been a long day.
Night time screams just get me moving.
SIGOS - Excellent acronym. May I use it in our family parental jargon?
A story on that **dreaded **Thump!****:
The day Mrs Trupa and I decided that jr. was really getting too tall for the upper mattress position in his crib, we had just put him down for the afternoon nap. He was about 11 months old, and could already climb like a monkey. The We were downstairs preparing dinner when we heard a big thump on the upstairs floor, then dead silence. Time for one glance to each other, and I swear that onion I was peeling was still rolling on the counter when the both of us got to his room door, to find the little angel sleeping peacefully, in his crib.
I never though Mrs Trupa could move that fast…
Turns out it was my cordless drill, which I had placed on the floor vertically resting on its battery/handle, when he went for his nap, had just fallen over on its side. That darn thing is heavier than one would think. Needless to say that the drill got re-tasked right after that nap into lowering the mattress.
With respect to crying, our philosophy is that if he can cry, then he’s probably not hurt that badly, and we don’t have to run; unless it’s that cry: the shreiking scream of pain. Haven’t heard it too often, but it’s like someone commandeers your body and you move without thinking.
Kind of like the Benne Gesserit voice in the Dune books…
Ironically, his worst cries are during his night terrors, when he’s completely out of it. Scared the bejesus out of us at first, but now we’re sort of used to it. If one night he really does get into serious trouble, we’ll probably be a few seconds slow because we took the time to put on glases and a t-shirt before responding, thinking it’s only a night terror…
Our next door neighbour has a baby the same age as our little girl. Sometimes I will hear a cry or scream and do the jump and run bit only to find it is next doors kiddie not ours.
Annie talks or sings to herself whilst she plays and snores when she is asleep so the times when there is no sound I know it can only be one of two things:
-
she is getting into mischief
-
she is working on something really evil in her nappy (got to concentrate for that).
Don’t know which is worse.
I have to agree with silence. It’s even worse when I’ve run around the house calling her name and she doesn’t respond.
Her screaming/crying does nothing anymmore. My little drama queen freaks out about the strangest things (the dog licked her, she can’t find her belt, etc.) so we just yell out, “Unless you’re dying or bleeding we don’t want to hear it!”
My son has night terrors. I swear, he lets out the most heart stopping bloodcurdling screams I’ve ever heard. It can vault me from a dead sleep all the way into his room without ever touching the floor. I don’t usually wake up myself until I’m in there.
Getting him snapped out of it is another story, but that initial scream puts me into shocked automatic parent mode.
You mean you’re not supposed to do that with your kids? Crap, guess I’d better let Stinkerbell and Crankenstein out. 
I think for me, it’s that particular sound a toddler’s head makes when it meets a solid object - more of a Thunk! than a Thump!, if you know what I mean.
Silence is also a big giveaway, especially if either of the kids has been out of site for more than a couple of minutes.