One day, I was in need of a bath. Trying to bathe oneself with a baby in tow is always a fun trip. I’ve heard other moms say, “No problem, just bring the baby in the tub or shower with you!” Sounds great in theory, but I cannot reconcile the idea of sharing my dirty bathwater with a pure little creature.
Plus, I wanted to shave my legs using some coconut oil, and mother’s intuition informs me that the combination of “slippery and sharp” makes for terrible safe-baby conditions.
My solution? Tandem bathing. I filled my bathtub with piping hot water because I like first degree burns — oh yeah, another reason to avoid bathing with a baby — and then I adjusted the temperature to “normal” before directing the hand-held shower head to fill her inflatable tub on the floor next to the big tub.
We get in our respective tubs. I begin bathing and shaving. The baby begins doing the following:
- Standing on the edge of her inflatable tub in an attempt to climb into the dirty, burn-y, slippery, razor-filled tub. Let me repeat — standing on the edge of an inflatable tub. This is not safe.
- Throwing her tub toys into my tub. Over. And over. And over… I was beginning to feel like this was all an elaborate game of fetch, and I was the dog.
- Pulling everything she could get her hands on into her tub. This included her clothes, my clothes and a bath towel. She pulled each item under water, got them all good and soaked, and then threw the waterlogged items into a sopping heap on the bathroom rug. Over. And over. And over…
She began crying in frustration when the bath towel was too heavy with water to pull back into her tub. Note to physicists: it’s easier to heave a wet item out of water than it is to drag it back over land into the water again.
After my relaxing, spa-like bathing experience, I put the baby down on the king-size bed so I could dress her. She flipped over onto her belly and with the lightening-fast speed of a 15-month-old who refuses to walk because she’s mastered crawling like a dessert asp has mastered sand, she took off.
Commence the slow-motion scene of my adrenaline panic as she begins her sprint to the other side of the bed. Let me pause here to explain that when she reaches the far edge of the bed, she will keep going and fall the three-foot drop onto her adorable little blonde noggin. At least that’s my prediction. All previous experiments of letting her get to the point of launching herself before catching her bear this out.
My action-hero self yelled, “NOOOoooooo!” (in slow-mo, remember?) as I raced around the bed to save my baby from certain dome bonkage. Only, as I reached the other side of the bed, I was confronted by the evil drawer of The Hubby’s dresser, the drawer that insists on hanging open at all times.
I was wounded when my thigh crashed at max-speed into the evil drawer’s knob. I saved the baby, but my bruised leg paid the price. I scooped up the baby, who was laughing hysterically of course, and stood in front of the mirror to confront the angry bruise forming at ground zero.
That was about a week ago. Early this morning, I cuddled my sweet baby while our brains shrugged off the fog of slumber. She poked her index finger into the purple spot of flesh and asked, “Thish?”
“That’s a bruise,” I explained. “A round bruise. Like a circle.”
“Circle,” she repeated. She continued to prod and asked, “Color?”
“It’s purple. It’s a purple circle.”
The moral of the story: Always take the opportunity to teach your baby their shapes and colors, even if it means giving yourself a contusion.
