It's not Christmas unless someone poops on the floor

Yeah, it's not really Christmas unless someone (not an animal) poops on the floor.  It doesn't happen every year, but I seem to remember that my most favorite (recent) Christmases involved someone pooping on the floor.

This year it happened to be my kid that pooped on the floor.  Since we have to travel for Christmas, I decided, since Otter was young enough that he'd never know the difference, we'd open our gifts the weekend before Christmas so that he could play and we didn't have to worry about transporting our gifts.  Santa understood and obliged to come early. 

Anyways, after a morning of opening gifts and reindeer pancakes, Otter happily took a bath and after getting out of the bath toddled out to his new toys while I gathered a diaper and some clothes for the day.  In a matter of minutes (seriously, two minutes MAX) he had pooped and peed on the living room floor. Honestly, he looked pretty damn impressed with him self when I shrieked in horror. I, my friends, was not impressed, I didn't know what to do.  Obviously it needed cleaned up, but was I to reprimand him? Rub his nose in it like a puppy (c'mon, do you SERIOUSLY think I'd do that!?!).  No, I didn't reprimand him, it was my fault for leaving him bare butt to roam free around his domain.  I did raise my voice once to startle him before he stepped in it.  But we all survived...I with a mental picture that will last a life time and a good prom night story.  Sorry buddy, you don't really think I'll let you live this down do you?

My niece did something similar a few years ago while she was potty training.  The entire family was sitting around my sister-in-law's living room talking and playing with gifts when we noticed that she was missing.  I spotted her behind the tree squatting.  Her parents asked her what she was doing but she wouldn't respond.  So her dad walked around to check on her and promptly returned laughing hysterically.  She had quickly became "your daughter" to my sister-in-law.  We all giggled and she (my niece) was rightfully embarrassed.  And knowing her father, I am sure this will be a prom night story for her, too.

Back to our Christmas, it was nice.  I was super pumped because this was Otter's first semi-coherent Christmas.  He gets how to open gifts and such now.  And since I'm not trying to convince you that I'm super woman, I'll admit that the sugar free peanut butter cookies I made for Santa sucked.  Like really bad, sucked.  But I do adore the reindeer pancakes we had that morning.

Simply make 1 large pancake for the head, a medium pancake for the face, and 2 smaller ones for the ears. Bacon (turkey bacon in our case) for the antlers and your favorite berries (we used blackberries, but if you want a Rudolph use a strawberry or raspberry) for the nose and eyes.  Enjoy!