"Guess what, Buddy Barrett," said Suzi.

    "What?" said Buddy, flatly.

    "You're a nut!" Ordinarily, this joke gets a big laugh out of both of them. But this time, Buddy just shook his head.

    "Guess what," he said back to Suzi.

    "What?" she asked.

    "Your whole family's a nut," Buddy sneered.

    "Ha, ha!" said Suzi triumphantly. "You're in my family. That means you're a nut, just like I said." Mallory could see that this was going nowhere. "Okay, okay," she said. "C'mon, let's get this diaper changing over with. Suzi, where has your mom been keeping the diapers lately?" The Barretts' house is pretty messy. "A pigsty," Stacey called it, the first time she sat there.

    Sometimes we try to tidy up while we're there, but Mallory didn't think that was a good idea, with Buddy and Suzi in such bad moods. So she asked Suzi to lead her to the diapers (Suzi and Marnie share a room), and asked Buddy to help her distract Marnie while she changed the wet diaper.

    "Moonie, Meanie, Mownie!" said Buddy, dancing around the changing table and making faces while Mallory wiped Marnie's bottom. His technique wasn't the greatest, but Mal had to admit that it worked. Marnie was smiling and waving at him, instead of crying and kicking. She's usually not too crazy about having her diaper changed, so the distraction helped a lot.

    "Thanks, Buddy," said Mallory. "Thanks, Suzi. You guys were a big help." She lifted up the newly dry Marnie, who was making what Buddy and Suzi call her "ham face," which she only does when she's happy. Then she led them back downstairs. "Now let's have a snack and you can tell me why you're both feeling so cranky today." "I'm not cranky!" whined Suzi.