Not what you expect at a birthday party, that's for sure.

So we had a big Clump Pt 1 party today (with about half of the clump being born between November and the end of the year, and the other half being born in January or February) and it went alright. I wound up doing too much, trying to run things that I should let other people run, but at least today I realized I was doing it and made myself take steps backwards. It's tough, though to see Lil Girl and Youngest Nephew behave so differently when their parents are around and not want to step in and say "No: that's not acceptable - at least not at our house!"

From the unexpected developments category, however, comes the following anecdote:

There's about 8 of us sitting around the table playing bullshit, when SisterCh looks over at the bedroom door and asks "Why is that door opening?" It shuts immediately, but I've seen the little face and the tiny fingers that caused the opening/shutting and am stunned: those little fingers, that little face belong to a little girl who is supposedly napping.

In her playpen.

That's right, Lil Girl had climbed out of her playpen, I still don't know how. All she could tell me afterwards is that she "Jumped". I don't think that's exactly the right word, but it certainly tells us that someone is ready to nap on a bed (which we haven't done before because this is a child who needs boundaries and the edge of a bed means very little. However, if the walls of a crib are also going to mean very little, the edge of a bed is a safer useless boundary.)

Oh, but wait: that's not all.

I went in to try to get her to go to sleep, and rather quickly figured out the reason that she wasn't sleeping: A pungently poopy pull-up.

Which she had left in her playpen, before her "jumping" out.

So, there she is bare-assed, and she says "I did pee pees" and let me tell you that I almost panicked, thinking about all the places she could have peed in my parents' bedroom, before she proudly towed me to the "big girl" (toddler) potty that is in there.

She had peed, so I put her up on the bed, and wiped her, got a new pull up on.

Surely that is the happy ending to our story? No? No.

I shut off the light and tried to get her to lay down again. She sat in my lap, and we rocked to the lullabies, and she gently caressed my face.

The odor of the poop was still pretty strong, though, so I asked her if she'd pooped again. "No."

I played with her hair, she played with mine.

Still: the smell.

And then a terrible thought occurred to me:

"Lil Girl, did you touch the poo poo with your handies?"

"No"

A big sigh of relief....

"No," she says, wiggling her hand in my face: "just my fingers."