Stinky Houdini

We try so hard!  We double pull-up.  We use one piece jammies.  We have a washable, waterproof mattress cover.  We have been getting her up relatively early to avoid leaks.  Sunday morning I woke up a little before 8am.  I could have rolled over and gone back to sleep, but I heard Elli.  I thought to myself, "I'll at least go get her up and help her use the bathroom."  So I stumble downstairs and into her room.  As I open the door, an unmistakable announcement wafts through the air: Elli is messy.  But no worry!  Worst case scenario is a leaky diaper and the need to launder the sheets and mattress cover.  Unless....

Several years ago a rather unfortunate mattress purchasing experience left with an extra king-sized mattress.  For a while this was in the guest room.  This was a rather small guest room and the king-sized bed ate up most of the space, but it's a nice mattress and our guests seemed to like sleeping on it.  Then we adopted Lexi and Sophi.  This required Elli to move into the guest room.  So Elli has the most "bed-square-footage-per-person" in the family.  At first we didn't do all we should to protect this somewhat expensive piece of furniture from sweet Elli.  A $100 plus cleaning bill encouraged us to take more precautions.  So we bought a king-sized mattress cover.  This mattress cover is a beast to put on.  It slides over the entire mattress and then zips to completely enclose it.  It takes two people to do this.  Over time the cover has shrunk just a bit as it has been washed.  At this point we rarely zip the top.  But understand, just putting the thing on should be plenty of protection.  The bottom of the cover is between the mattress and the box spring.  There is no way to pull it off, or even more than a few inches down, without lifting the very heavy king-sized mattress.  Clearly beyond Elli's capabilities....

So when I went in and saw this:

I was amused, but still not fully comprehending.  Then it hit me.  She was INSIDE THE MATTRESS COVER!!!  This is virtually impossible. Look at the fitted sheet.  It is still covering all four corners of the bed, and therefore the mattress cover.  The only place there is an accessible opening to crawl under the mattress cover is at the top left corner:

 and there's seriously about a 1-inch gap there.  The only possible way to get under the mattress cover was for her to pull off the sheet, giving her access to the opening.  So in other words, she somehow managed to pull off the sheet, crawl head first under the cover and then pull the sheet back down over the cover.  All in a locked room!  This is patently impossible, hence the title of this post.  Here's a view of her after I pulled the sheet back:

And of course the kicker was that she was messy, had leaked, and we will once again have to seek assistance from a sure-to-be-spendy cleaning service.  Ah, life.

- Jer

PS.  In that last photo, Elli's legs are on the bed, and her head is the closest part of her to the ground:)