We had 1.0's birthday party Saturday. It was held at our neighborhood Michael's. You know...the craft store? Anyway, I had no idea that they did birthday parties, but they do. And it was a hell of a lot cheaper than Moonwalks R' Us or even McDonalds.

Did you know that McDonald's charges around twelve bucks per kid for birthday parties? Really. And do you know what the kids get?

A happy meal.

Yep. That's it. The playground remains open for any other kid who's parents don't care about their nutritional well-being to pee in the ball crawl or chunder in the overhead tunnels for your birthday princess to crawl in, through, around or over.

So Michael's charged around 8 or 9 bucks a kid, we brought cake and drinks, and it was great. The kids made pots and bird baths out of playdo clay stuff, even though we had asked / hoped that they be able to paint some pottery to be fired that day. The answer we got was "that's too hard for four year olds to do."

Right. But rolling two ounces of play-do into eight feet of worm to coil and stack is easy.

Anyway, the wife was doing a great job when 1.0 said she had to go to the can. I had no idea the intent of her visit, but whener she says "pee pee!", I assume she's gotta go number one.

The wife had done so much already and asked me to take 1.0 to the head. I said I would and did.

I took 1.0 into the last stall of a two-stall bathroom that had one urinal, but it was four feet off the ground and any four year old in this crowd was going to have to climb on to the sink to have a chane of hitting water in that.

Back to the first part here. I had Lauren up on the side of the seat and was determined NOT to drop her in the toilet like I had at Beef O'Brady's on Daddy-Daughter night a few months ago.

As we were there, in popped Ben, a classmate of the urchin's. They just started talking away (which made me somewhat uncomfortable until later when my wife pointed out that they all do that at pre-school). Finally, Lauren starts displaying a vein in the middle of her forehead and her face goes red as she exclaims "Poopy daddy!"

I closed the door and then I heard Ben jumping on the seat next door, and he immediately said "Hey Lauren!! I'm poopying too!!!"

Good grief.

Then, I see a shoe stick under the door and my neighbor's boy is yelling "See my shoe?!?!?!? It's me!! Nathaniel!! I gotta pee!"

Lauren finally finishes and I get out of the stall to see five little boys all running around doing the peepee dance and holding themselves. It seems that they now all hate the women's room and want to go to the bathroom alone, which means that I, father of two girls and only one that is potty trained, am standing in the midst of a urinary perfect storm as five kids with bladders the size of a gerbils all queue up to use two toilets.

Oh, and then Lauren turns the water on high to wash her hands only to be hit with a monsoon-esqe wall of water. She's soaked from head to chest, there are kids peeing and laughing, and I'm sort of in a functioning shock.

When we all left the bathroom together (I had to be sure everyone washed up before cake time) and walked back into the party room, the moms all did a doubletake, realizing what had transpired, although no one yet knew of the simultaneous bowel movements that are now etched into my memory forever.

When informed of my cool under fire handling of poop and pee gate, my wife laughed but was very proud of me, which made me feel nice.

Then she died laughing again and told everyone we talked to for the rest of the weekend.

Oh, and Ben's mom called me to tell me this. Once in the car, she said "So Ben, did you have a good time?"

Ben replied "Yeah!! I pooped with Lauren and we had cake."

Nice.