Intense

Like most people, I’ve spent the majority of my adult life trying to get control of my emotions. It’s hard to stay out of mental hospitals when you act on your urge to stand up on a table and scream, “You are all just a bunch of jackasses! Jackasses!”

This is one of 1,226,711,664 things I love about Elijah. He feels things so intensely. If he is being ejected from the anus of a giant plastic fish at the waterpark, he literally howls with delight. I’ve seen him so happy that he balls his fists up and shakes uncontrollably. He also is not afraid to scream at a grown man, “I LOVE you!”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, he feels anger intensely. One of the greatest Eli moments is when he lays flat on his back, as if a corpse, and screams so loud Diana’s many knickknacks rattle on our shelves.

Over the last few nights, Elijah has been sick. And he’s pissed about it. He’s feverish, achy and generally miserable. Whenever he wakes up and realizes he still feels like poop, he screams to the treetops.

Of course this doesn’t seem so cute at 4am. Poor Diana has been taking the brunt of the assault since I was preparing to head back out of town. Whenever I tell her I’m sorry about it, she says, “It’s preparation…preparation for Elijah 2…”

On one such screaming fit, I snatched Eli out of Diana’s hands in the hopes of giving Diana five minutes of sleep. I took him downstairs and shoved Grover off the couch. I put him on my chest and, remarkably, he and I fell instantly asleep.

I woke up several hours later, soaked to the bone. My first thought was, “Did that little jerk pee on me?” My second thought was, “Did I pee on him?” I realized that Elijah was so feverish, he drenched through his shirt and through my shirt.

Unfortunately, Elijah realized it at the same time. He still felt awful and let loose a howl that brought Diana bounding down the stairs.

Elijah was furious. It was if he was screaming at Diana and I, “You are all just a bunch of jackasses! Jackasses!”