Pukeded

I’ve been pouring over the old HamannEggs posts from when Elijah was a newborn to prepare myself mentally for Elijah 2, Revenge of Elijah. One thing I noticed was how many references to puking there were. It seemed like Eli behaved more like a fraternity pledge than an actual human being. He gets it from me. I have a world famous gag reflex. The act of writing “gag reflex” made me gag.

But over the last year, Elijah seems to have adopted his mother’s strong stomach. Aside from a few swine/asian/monkey flu bouts, the little guy tends to keep his insides where they belong.

So imagine Diana’s surprise when he barfed in Jewel yesterday.

Eli apparently was getting antsy at being stuck in the sharp metal cage that doubles as a Jewel grocery cart. So Diana picked up a box of yogurt covered pretzels and let him shove the contents into his mouth.

Sorry to digress, but I highly disapprove of letting kids eat food in a grocery store. For one, it’s kind of gross. And two, I think it’s a version of stealing. What happens if you realize you forgot your wallet? Or someone mugs you? How will you pay for that half eaten box of Cookie Crisp? How?

Anyhoo, right when Diana and Eli rounded the corner into the diaper aisle, Eli began pantomiming the international sign for “I’m about to boot.”

Diana looked around frantically. Her closest option was her purse. An idea she discarded because the cleaning implications were just too much for her OCD. She then looked at the rows and rows of diapers and wondered if she could crack open a box and let him eject his pretzels into it.

But Elijah very politely said, “Hands? Hands?” So Di knew what she had to do. She formed a barf receptacle with her mitts and let him have at it.

At which point Diana was left with another dilemma. What to do with her newfound gift of goo? She desperately turned to the crazy looking woman sharing the aisle with them. The crazy lady’s look said, “Hey, I’m crazy. One of the benefits of being crazy is I do no have to interact with humanity. Especially humanity with barf in its hands…”

Diana immediately ran out of the aisle and deposited Elijah’s digested pretzels into a nearby garbage can. She returned to him, where he proudly proclaimed, “I pukeded! I pukeded!”