Actually, I am clever. What I really meant to say is that sometimes I'm so clever it backfires on me.
Bathtime is strategically placed after the messiest part of the day - dinner. Even though my toddler's eating habits have gotten much cleaner (almost obsessive...he HAS to have a napkin and freaks if something falls into his lap), he still manages to collect bits of dinner (usually sauce) all over random parts of his body that I thought were protected by a bib.
Sauce is sneaky and likes to ooze it's way into as many nooks and crannies as possible.
The baby is a mess. He is always a mess. He gets messy before he even makes it to the high chair, usually. He gets messy just by breathing.
Therefore, bathtime is inevitable after dinner. Usually Calen is clean enough to go upstairs to the tub on his own. But Cam is usually a horrifying, sticky, bubbling, oozing swamp high chair monster. He's also usually naked (except for diaper...obviously), so he's especially slippery and slimy.
Spaghetti night always seems like a good idea at the time.
Proper protocol for high chair monster removal is to pick up the oozing creature with four fingers (two fingers holding up each arm) and hold said creature as far out from you as possible. Then swiftly march upstairs and plop creature - diaper and all - into the tub. Allow family dog to follow you up the stairs to clean up whatever debris falls off creature.
It would just be easier if I fed my kids IN the bathtub.
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| BEFORE things went downhill.... |
Cam usually gets washed up first. Usually it's because I don't want to stare at dinner leftovers caked on him for the next half hour. Also because he bores of the tub quickly. So I washed him up, threw a clean diaper on him and let him roam around upstairs.
The clean diaper part is important. I used to let him roam around naked. Then he pooped all over the bathroom floor. And crawled into it. Dragging his belly through it. And I had to start all over with the bath. AND do an extra load of laundry since he smeared poop all over the bathroom rug. FYI.
Once Cam was out of the tub I had what I thought was a great game for Calen to play. Over Christmas we had acquired some Crayola bathtub finger paints. It's pretty much just tubs of gooey soap, but it's brightly colored and smells nice.
And what kid wouldn't want to smear bright primary colors all over the bathtub walls and get away with it?
So I gave Calen the three tubs (blue, red, yellow) and let him have at thee. He loved it. The walls were colored, the tub was colored, HE was colored, the water was colored. AND the water was getting super sudsy which is extra fun. COLORED sudsy. What could go wrong?
It was a good idea at the time.
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| Bathtub fingerpaints...a great idea...at the time. |
And then, it was time to get out. The paints were used up and Calen was done. Well my clever self hadn't washed his hair yet. So I dunked a plastic cup into the water and poured it over his head.
And suddenly, I wasn't so clever.
The usual kid-friendly Crayola FAILED. The suds in the cup went over Calen's head, and burned his eyes.
REALLY bad.
He screamed, cried, rubbed his eyes. Rubbing his eyes with his sudsy hands caused more to get into his eyes. And he cried. I took a cloth with FRESH water and wiped his eyes. He cried, and rubbed his eyes. And more soap got in his eyes. Rinse, and repeat (literally).
It went on for ten minutes. Meanwhile Cam is behind me trying to crawl OVER me to get into the tub that's full of BURNING ACID SUDS. So with one arm I'm trying to pull Cam away from the tub (which caused Cam to scream angrily), and the other arm trying to keep Calen from rubbing his eyes and rinsing them with fresh water.
It was so loud in the bathroom that Brad came upstairs just to see what the hell was going on. He asked if I needed help.
Do I LOOK like I need help?? Things are CLEARLY under control....
I told him to pull the baby cretin off me and take him away so that I could deal with my soap acid victim and pull him out of the tub. I got him out, and the crisis had finally passed.
This was two days ago.
Today was bathtime again and the news that he had to return to the evidently deadly bathtub caused Calen to have a complete and total meltdown all the way up the stairs.
Until he got in the tub and realized there were no evil bathtub paints. Then he was okay with the idea.
Apparently from now on we're steering clear of Crayola bath paint products.
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