Sleepover

Elijah got invited to his very first sleepover.  I don’t count the times he’s slept at grandparents or cousins, because the stakes are low.  If you wet the bed at Grandma Connie’s, you get a cookie.  If you wet the bed at a stranger’s, you gain a lifelong nickname like “Soggy Bottom.”

Granted, this sleepover was at cousin Finn’s, but he would be attending with 7 other 9 year old boys, which is the Super Bowl of sleepovers.

In the hours leading up to the event, I went into coaching mode.  We focused on nighttime diapers.  As you recall, Eli has what is known as “Hamann Bladder Syndrome.”  This means you are in a near constant state of needing to leave your status meeting to go to the bathroom.  Or needing to leave your client call to go to the bathroom.  Or needing to leave writing your blog post to go to the bathroom. 

Be right back.

But Eli still wears a diaper to bed.  Granted, it’s a big boy diaper with the very confident, yet soon to be mortified child Model on the packaging. Knowing 9 year olds can be cruel, I wanted to make sure Eli had a plan.

“I’ll just say, ‘Hey everyone.  Don’t make fun of me, but I wear a diaper.’”

“That’s one way to do it, pal.  However, you may want to think of another plan,” I said.

We agreed the best plan was to slip off to the restroom while the other boys were busy with playing jacks or marbles or whatever 9 year olds do and throw on his diaper.

We packed his bag with extra diapers hidden at the bottom underneath his stuffed moosey and we were set.

We drove across Evanston confident he was going to have a great time and not come away from it scarred for life.

We arrived at cousin Finn’s and Eli jumped from the car carrying his sleeping bag, pillow and diaper bag. 

He immediately fell into a massive mud puddle and got completely covered from head to toe.

I hightailed it out of there as fast as I could.