I’ll write more about the party itself tomorrow.  But for now, an amusing vignette from when it was winding down.

We had hoped that Memorial Day weekend would, as the ‘unofficial start to summer’ entail a warm day for the party outside.  Now, it wasn’t freezing by any stretch of the imagination, but it was really not so ‘summer-like’.

Plan A had been, weather-permitting, to put the inflatable pool out in the back yard and let the kids have a dip in that, as well as putting out a few of the sprinklers and the like.  Obviously, with it barely touching 70 around here, we didn’t go that route, and instead made due with the water table as the sole liquid element.  As you can imagine, wet children ensued, but not to the extent that anyone really was going to be ‘soaked’.

Well, except for the Monster.  He still managed to get quite wet, but this was at our house, so such was theoretically not a problem.

At one point, he did start complaining about being wet.  Since the party was in our backyard, and at this point it was just ourselves and family, it wasn’t – to me – a big deal if he stripped down to his pull-up for running around with his cousin.  Yeah… no.  To him, it seems like it’s all or nothing all of a sudden, and off came the pull-up before we could stop him from stripping, but we started in with him about how he has to wear something when he’s outside.

After some cajoling, the pull-up was on again, and we let him go out to play with his cousin.  I think that if we say that the pull-up lasted three minutes, that would have been lying about the last two and a half.  But again (silly me), what’s the harm of his being naked in our own back yard?  There’s plant life around it and only really two ways to get out, and we were close at hand to make sure he didn’t go anywhere… and he’s not really inclined to go anywhere.

Except the neighbors’ house, because they have all sorts of toys on their patio.

So of course, when no one was paying attention, he shot off and ran next door, with his cousin and other family in pursuit to drag him back before anyone saw him…

I think we’ve learned our lesson now – either have spare clothes, or just make sure that we’re closer to the ways out of the back yard…