our legendary barfing story

As promised, right here and right now, you will read the story of the most impressive barf in the history of our family.

Close to Christmas of 2011, we were living in our rental home in Lake Cowichan. Back in the days of having a plain old double bunk. (We've graduated now to a triple bunk bed!) We had company for a few days - my cousin and his girlfriend. Cousin slept on the couch, and girlfriend was to sleep on a mattress on the floor of Jaxon's room. I had considered putting her on the floor in the other boys' room, in case Jax woke up in the night and tripped on her or got spooked by a stranger in his room. I decided to just keep her in there as she'd probably sleep better in there with him than with the other boys who were (and still are) earlier risers than baby brother.

Fast forward to the middle of the night. Max and Marty both came into our room. One boy had barfed, two boys were crying. As they told the story, we learned that Max (he who sleeps on the upper bunk) had woken up with an upset tummy and tried to get to the bathroom for relief. Well, he didn't make it to the bathroom before relief came. As he was descending the ladder, he erupted and it landed in the only place it could ... all over Marty's head and pillow. (I never liked him sleeping with his head at that end. My concern was strangulation from getting too close to the ladder. Little did I know there could be a less life-threatening, more disgusting outcome to fear.) Not only was this the most random barf episodes we've ever known, it was also the most voluminous.  And that's when they came to our room. One with a much happier tummy, one severely traumatized.

While I tackled cleaning up as much of the mess from the sheet, pillow, bed, ladder, floor ... Paul took both boys into the shower for a good scrubbing. This is what the boys had to say to each other about the ordeal:

Max: Sorry for barfing on your head, bro.
Marty: It's okay.

Max: Was it scary?

Marty: Yes.

Max: Was it hot?

Marty: Yup.

Classic. 

Later, he didn't know why Marty was screaming so much about the shampoo in his eyes until he realized he was using grown-up shampoo, not the kid-friendly-tear-free kind of shampoo. That's the part our overnight guests remember. - the part with the child screaming in the middle of the night.

Paul made a trip out to camp to fetch the super duper carpet cleaner and gave the floor a good once-over, followed by a twice-over.  (We thought we cleaned every nook and cranny of the bedframe and ladder. When we took the bed apart for our move to camp 4 months later, we found a few spots we missed. Thankfully it was minimal and dry and crusty, so an easy final clean-up.) We cleaned as much as we could, opened the window all the way, and got everyone back to sleep. I said a prayer of thanks that the girlfriend was not sleeping on the floor in the boys' room. We're pretty sure it was that Max had eaten too much dinner, and done so too quickly, as he didn't have any trouble after that and no one else fell ill.

And that's the end of that story.