Standing

Even though we’ve been home for less than two days, the fantastic memories from our vacation have been pushed aside to make room for the horrible flu that’s ravaging the Hamann house. This vile bug has picked off everyone. Eli, Diana, Luca.

Everyone except me. I feel like the last man in a zombie movie. Armed only with a gallon of Purel and a delicious Spanish red wine.

But I wanted to give you an update on Luca’s bag o’ tricks.

He points now. Thank goodness he only uses this power for good. Because the sight of him giving you the finger with that big lopsided grin can explode your heart. God have mercy if he gives you the double barrel fingers. Last night, when he was covered in his own vomit and possibly the largest diarrhea in the history of man, he still managed to point at me, smile, and say, “Gee.”

The best is when he gives you the old “E.T.” He loves it when you return his point and touch fingers. He laughs. You laugh. You promise to buy him a yacht. He hopefully eventually forgets you promised to buy him a yacht.

Not content with crawling, Luca also stands now. Which delights him to no end. He gets so excited by his own balancing act that he clucks like a chicken. His standing also results in lots of falling. So he has a permanent bruise on his forehead. But it also resulted in this story:

The other night, while Diana was in bed with the bug, I was in charge of getting both boys put to bed after baths. I raced Luca up the stairs and plopped him down and locked the baby gate.

I snatched up Elijah and shoved him (maybe a little too hard) towards the stairs so I could make the nighttime milk run.

When I rushed back, I found Eli laughing hysterically on one side of the gate at Luca, who was standing on the other side of the gate. Luca was engaged in what we like to call “The Naked Crazies.”

I said, “Eli, keep him crazy. I’m going to get the camera.”

Having no luck in my short search for the camera, I grabbed my phone and raced towards the stairs. I heard a horrific shriek. An Eli shriek. I thought for a moment that I’d be spending the evening at the Evanston hospital.

But then I saw it. Eli had taken a direct hit of pee from Luca. After the initial shock, he found it as hilarious as I did. Luca found it to be funniest of all. Probably because it was his pee.

Eli and I marveled at the ferocity of Luca’s pee. He must have nailed every stair down to the first landing. I congratulated him on his pee. And then I calculated whether pee was something you had to actually clean up from carpet or if I could just let it dry.

I wont tell you what I decided. But next time you’re over and smell pee, it was Grover.