Gal Smiley has a pair of pale pink pants that for some reason, are strongly resistant to the otherwise overwhelming power of Shout. It seems that every time she wears them she gets mud or chocolate or blood or grass all over them, and they never get clean, and now they are sort of like “pale pink with brown spots pants,” but since they fit her so nicely and go so well with some of her dressier tops I’m still keeping them around. I’ve put them on semi-retirement because we play outside almost every day now, and the call of the outdoors is too much for the pale pink pants — they are irresistably drawn to the only mud puddle in a three kilometer radius.

Today we had playgroup at our house and that meant that we wouldn’t be going outside all morning. I was planning spaghetti for lunch but Gal Smiley doesn’t like tomato sauce, so plain noodles seemed like a safe, non-staining bet. Since it’s raining and she has a runny nose we also weren’t planning any afternoon outings, so I bravely brought out the pale pink pants. She looked adorable.

Later during playgroup I was looking around for the Gal to see if she was doing okay. I found her at the front door with the big pile of everyone’s wet shoes and boots…dragging them one by one over her lap and smearing mud on her pale pink pants.

Nothing is safe anymore!