Bathtime Brouhaha

I acknowledge that at some point in the future, my darling children will be able to read and may find their way to this blog.  And in that spirit, I try NOT to tell too many stories that may be of an embarrassing or compromising nature.

But this story from last week, is too good to pass up.

Bathing the babies, since my Girl is now a full fledged toddler, has become more complicated.  When it's just me, and I'm bathing them on my own, we just do scrub downs.  They have their nice, long baths on the weekends when Chris is here to help me.  We had a friend in from out of town (my friend Brett's sweet hubby, Ben), so Chris played hookie from work to hang out with Ben.  Since Chris was home, I ran a nice, deep bath for the kids and got them started.  They love bubbles, so I was blowing bubbles for the Boy and Girl, when I started to notice that there were some bubbles of her own making coming from her behind.  So I called Chris to come in and mind them (for fear that she would make a deposit in the bathtub, she has done so before.  A LOT.), so that I could go pull cookies out of the oven.

Then sure enough, the Girl's deposit started to float to the surface of the water.  So I ordered both kids out of the tub, they are now both naked and cold in a very small bathroom, while Chris pulls the cookies out of the oven and fetched the cleaning supplies for me and I started to fish out the...deposit.  The Boy, meanwhile, is happily blowing bubbles from a nearly full container of wonder bubbles.  The Girl is loudly protesting her naked and shivering state.

The water was drained and I was scrubbing the tub, and the Boy was happily dancing around with his bubbles, when he hit a soapy spot on the floor and slipped.  CRASH!  Down to the floor, bubbles spill EVERYWHERE, the Boy is howling, and the Girl, at the sight of her brother's distress, immediately started howling as well.  I straighten up to observe the abject chaos, Chris looks at me as if to say, "What on earth should we do?!"  So I reach out and hug the soapy Boy and the Girl is hanging on my legs, both children are naked and howling and all I could do was laugh.  It was just one of those moments that are impossible to accurately describe.

So the tub was cleaned, the toys bleached, and the children soaped and scrubbed clean.  And I was incredibly relieved to see them in to bed with the lights out.


Oddly, it's moments like these that make me laugh to see how far I have come in the last 5 years.  5 years ago, I would have absolutely lost it.  I would have been yelling and throwing stuff as I cleaned up the mess.  There would have been no sympathy for the mess makers, or anyone else.   I'm starting to think that perhaps the greatest thing that comes with parenthood isn't patience, it's a sense of humor.