Dude, who puked in here?

This is a post I began a few weeks ago, but just got around to finishing today. So if you read this and think, "Hey, I was there for that -- this is old news!" bear with me please.

I walked into my bathroom yesterday and noticed something.....odd. There were little tiny orange-ish splatters on the side of the tub, and on further investigation I saw more little splatters around the toilet bowl and on the wall behind it.

My first order of business, of course, was to clean it up but while doing so I couldn't help but wonder, "Who puked in here?" and, "Why didn't he or she tell me?" Once I was finished, I went out and delicately tried to ask Chris if he had recently vomited in our bathroom. I don't want to give the impression that my husband is in the habit of sloppily puking all over the bathroom, but I couldn't quite see how one of the kids could manage without me knowing about it. Chris, as you may imagine, was surprised by the question and a little bit offended. So I went on, much like the little bird who is looking for his mother, the main difference of course being our questions. His was "Are you my Mother?" while I was asking, "Did you throw up in the bathroom?"

No-one admitted to it. After getting four individual denials, we rounded everyone up in the living room, hoping to tickle some information out of them in a group setting. Blank faces all around: no-one had any memory of recently throwing up. Looking into their little faces one by one, I saw not one trace of knowingness. I began to doubt myself; had I puked in the bathroom, could I have been the one who forgot?

The sorry truth, however, is that one member of the family had already been on a streak. She had taken a trip to Friendly's with her grandparents and turned it into one of her signature "quick, throw as much money as you can on the table and maybe they'll forgive all the vomit," exits. Two days later she puked in our yard because she was afraid of slugs. Then she went into the house in puked in the (other) bathroom. You know who this is, of course. Claire. And it is unfortunately entirely plausible that she would run into my bathroom, vomit, and then walk away as if nothing had happened. She's kind of a pro like that.

We'll never know for sure who the mystery-puker is. But I'll always have my suspicions. In the meantime I wonder: why is it that living with small children is so very much like living in a frat house???