My brother came over around five, and I gave him the rundown. Matt and Penny got home a little bit later, and Penny was completely over the moon to see her "Un'John."

Matt and I left them watching Sesame Street, happy as clams, and went to his office's quarterly social event.

We had what was billed as "heavy hors d'oevures" but was more like "buffet dinner" at a club with the ugliest chandeliers ever made out of about six deer antlers each. But the food was excellent, and everyone Matt introduced me to had to tell me how utterly adorable Penny had been when Matt had her in his office on Tuesday.

It's always nice to get confirmation that your child is, actually, as cute as you think she is.

After a while, we broke up and went into Colonial Williamsburg and broke into two groups for the Ghost Tour.

That was more funny than spooky. The guy doing the tour kept up a running patter of explanations of how certain phrases in our language came into being -- bigwig, big shot, putting your best foot forward, minding your p's and q's... I'd heard some of them before, and it was an interesting glimpse into the life of the era.

But then he'd slip in some truly awful puns. Like: A guy died in England and wanted to be shipped back to Williamsburg to be buried. Long boat ride, so they put him in a barrel of whiskey to keep him preserved for the trip. When the ship got here, he was in good spirits. Rumor has it a couple of sailors sampled the whiskey on the trip. They said it had a full-bodied flavor.

Real groaners. I loved it, of course.

Matt and I got home around a quarter to ten. The house was all quiet. John and Sam had swapped out -- John has to be up early in the mornings for work, so Sam took over when she'd finished the last of her lessons for the day. We'd known that was coming.

Sam told us that she hadn't heard so much as a peep out of Penny since she'd arrived, but that apparently she'd been a real stinker for John. Right around the end of dinner, she'd realized that Matt and I weren't coming back before bedtime, and went into hysterics.

Now, I expect the hysterics had more to do with the fact that she was tired and still a bit overexcited from Hallowe'en. She just fixated on the fact that Matt and I were gone to give her something to cry about. So she screamed and cried and shut herself in the bathroom for a while and wouldn't let John in, and was generally a pain in the butt.

Eventually, he wrestled her into her pyjamas and put her to bed, and she conked out more or less immediately. But he hadn't been able to find the regular diapers we use at night, Sam warned us, so she was in a pullup.

I asked her to give John an apology for Penny's behavior, and she said she would, but she mostly shrugged it off as being good practice for him, because he wants kids but thinks they don't act like that for their parents. Ah-hahahaha! Boy, that'll be a good joke on him.

Given the warning about her diaper, I went into Penny's room the instant I heard her talking this morning.

"No, no," she said. "Un'John!"

"Uncle John had to go home, honey. You weren't very nice to him."

"I wanna go say sorry?"

So now she thinks John left because he was mad at her. I tried to convince her that he just had to go home but he still loves her, and reached in to give her a hug... and she was soaking wet.

John had not only not found the regular night-time diapers, he hadn't actually found the pull-ups, either. He'd put her in a swimming diaper for bed. A diaper which lets liquid through.

So while I cleaned her up, Matt came in and stripped the bed and started the laundry. We're beginning to think there's a karmic backlash on us going out without her, or a curse, or something.

Sam mentioned that she might want me to help her with a scrapbook project in the next month or so. I'd offer details, but it's a gift album and I'm never really sure who's reading this... Anyway, she'd pay for materials and was wondering how much I'd charge for my time to help her with it.

I have no idea how to answer that. I mean, adding up the cost of materials is trivial, but... How much do I charge? How do I charge? By the hour? By the page? Not too much, because she's my sister-in-law and she's helped us out on multiple occasions and never asked for a thing in return. But not nothing, because this is a sort of rush job and it's going to eat fairly heavily into my own time and projects...

Ah, well. I'll figure something out.

If it even happens, which is by no means certain.

--Liz