Refactoring hazard here. If the actual string markup is ever removed from the program code, to be stored as a human readable template it could easily have whitespace and comments:

```js
var container = document.createElement("li");

container.innerHTML = "  <!--contact full name--><b>{{first}} {{last}}</b>";

console.log( container.firstChild );
// > #text
console.log( container.childNodes );
// > [text, comment, b]
```


Recommend using `element.children` which is limited to _only_ nodes of type 1