Dr. Puke or The Reason You Haven't Heard Much From Us Lately

We have just recovered (knock on wood) from a bit of 'situation'. Our lovely Jude, the darling, darling child is also quite a bit tenacious. He discovered a while back that a quick way to be 'excused' from the dinner table was to puke up his dinner. Guess what? It worked. And, it got quite the reaction.

He transferred this learning recently onto getting a reaction when he doesn't want to go to bed. Pretty quickly after throwing, Mama and Papa give up on me getting myself to sleep and instead, are frantically cleaning, changing outfits and sheets. The end result, is that Dr. Puke gets to stay up later and gets lots of attention for the dozens of times he wakes up through the night. Mama and Papa are walking zombies. Hmm. Well, we worried, of course, that perhaps it was due to some illness. But, no. Doctor confirmed that, indeed, it was a behavioral decision to get his way. Doctor suggested we let him sleep in 'it', which was sort of stunning and Draconian. Not that we didn't consider it, seriously consider it. Instead,we are working on creating a super calm environment before bedtime complete with relaxing music during dinner and dim lights during bath as well as a strict bedtime routine. And, knock on wood, it seems to be helping. Dr. Puke is making it through the night with minimal wake-ups and NO throwing up (yet). Mama and Papa are moving out of zombie phase and are nearly back to human. Yippee!