Puking Crazies

With Elijah, we called them “Naked Crazies.” That hour between taking a bath and hitting the crib were all bets are off. Running, falling, laughing, jumping, kicking, screaming.

And with Luca, puking.

Luca gets so amped up during Naked Crazies that he’s taken to emptying the contents of his stomach all over the floor. Or all over Grover. Or all over Diana’s cleavage. It never seems to bother him all that much. He just shouts, “Puke!” and keeps running. Eli loves to see Luca puke to no end. He treats his younger brother like shaken up Budweiser can. And as soon as Luca pops, he screams with delight.

After the 5th or 6th night in a row of Puking Crazies, we decided to put a stop to it. We declared a moratorium on all running, chasing, bed jumping, etc. Basically, fun of all kinds was banished. From now on, the only things legal to do in our house after 7 are sitting quietly, reading, sipping warm milk and telling mommy she looks pretty.

But the Puking Crazies aren’t something you can simply regulate out of existence. Elijah and Luca treat their puke inducing fun as contraband. They wait until we walk out of the room and break out the insanity in small, intense batches. They scream and chase each other until we come rushing back into the room, scolding. Then they try to play it cool, pretending they were having a Shakespeare discussion. But it’s hard to cover up a massive pile of second hand milk.

Elijah spends a lot of time on the steps. We’ve threatened him with having to clean up the mess himself, but we think he’d enjoy sipping carpet cleaner too much.