Party Faux Pas

This evening, I was invited to a stamping party, hosted by a good friend of mine. I haven't been into stamping since before Elaina was born and I wasn't particularly psyched to go. Since Eric left home this morning for a gun show, I explained to my friend that if I came, I would have to bring Elaina with me. She told me that her husband was going to watch her kids downstairs in the basement and that he didn't mind watching Elaina too. So, I caved. No more excuses. I went.

I arrived a little bit before the party so that Elaina could get re-aquainted and settled in with the dad and his kids. In the meantime, another dad and his two kids had joined the "daddy day care party." Thinking everything was going smoothly, I quietly tried to slip away to join in the fun which is stamping. All was well for approximately 3 minutes until everyone in the room was silenced by a screaming, bellowing cry from beneath the floor boards. Hmmm... it seems as though I have developed the "mother's ear" for recognizing the cry of my own child. I kindly excused myself from the table of strangers whom I barely got a glimpse of and ran back downstairs. My friend's husband is attempting to hold and comfort the now thrashing Elaina as tears poured down her cheeks. She nearly jumped from his arms and clung to me like bark on a tree.

And so, we begin again. The longer I hung out downstairs, it became more clear to me that I wasn't going to be partaking in stamping anything this evening. Here is the list of reasons why: 1) Their basement is not a so-called "finished" basement. The concrete floor is cold and hard and the bazillion toys covering the remainder is more of a safety hazard than anything.
2.) The dads were good friends and seemed to get a little pre-occupied with baseball/ bowling/ football talk a little more than watching the kids as they were tearing into an enormous bag of leftover Halloween/ Christmas candy. Hello - hazard #2 - CHOKING.
3.) They were kind enough to put their guy-talk aside to include me, and in the midst of several conversations, I spotted Elaina attempting to put a plastic bead in her mouth (off the concrete floor) as she thought it might be candy, I grabbed one kid by the arm just before he toppled off a wooden toy onto the concrete floor, I established that one child was in need of a fresh diaper (not mine) and I removed 2 children from a piece of excercise equipment (that resembled a torture device) before they went splat onto the concrete floor. The guys, on the other hand, continued to talk about baseball/bowling/football.
4.) Every time Elaina would pass by me as I sat in my chair, she hugged my knees - happy that I hadn't left her.

At one point, I tried to rejoin the group with Elaina on my lap and her promise to be good, but if you have ever stamped (or tried to do anything one handed) my effort was fruitless (and stampless). After nearly 2 hours of this "party" Elaina had lost her binky downstairs and began to cry. The dads and myself launched a search team looking for her missing binky and when I did end up finding it, it was covered in cat hair and dirt. Like any good mom, I called off the search, hid it in my pocket, bribed my kid with a lollipop and raced out of the house.

Do we know how to party or what?