When Bathtime is a bust....

Bathtime is usually a good time at our house, but today it seemed doomed from the start. Perhaps when a mom's reason for having bathtime is solely to waste time until bedtime, she is only asking for trouble!

First, Ava was determined that the water was too hot. It was SO lukewarm I worried it might not be warm enough, but it was "too hot" before she even touched it; she of course stood crying in it for like 5 minutes before just all of a sudden changing her tune, sitting down and playing. Now you may wonder, why I didn't just "let" her get out. I would have. She WANTED to be in the bath, but stood there crying. I stood there staring, wondering how much more irrational behavior would manifest itself before this overtired preschooler was tucked safely in bed.

Sure enough irrationality did strike again, soon Ava was mistreating her brother. He is teething, so he enjoys chewing on a good, wet washcloth. She kept pulling it out of his mouth and throwing it out of his reach. I made her stop, but within about a minute she found it equally as fun to bop him on the head. At that point she lost the priviledge of touching her brother. I knew the battle had begun when she didn't touch Phin but purposefully touched his bath seat and looked at me with a smirk- the kind of smirk you want to "wipe off her face". She received a warning of losing books at bedtime. We had a few minutes of peace during which time I received a phone call. My dear friend Bobbi was talking to me for all of two minutes when Ava decided to dump a very large and very full cup of water over her brother's head. My poor son sputtered for breath and blinked to restore his eyesight. Phin was crying, so while holding the phone with my chin, I leaned over to rescue him from the tub. Our brand new handset drop directly into the water and sunk straight to the bottom. I wrapped Phin in a towel and then rescued the phone. I wanted to dump my own head under water for reacting without using the brain God gave me! AHHHH! Knowing how frustrated my husband will be when he realizes we have to replace our phones yet again- I tried by best to salvage it by taking it apart, laying the battery aside and am hoping for the best. Needless to say, Ava did lose her books.

I dressed and lotioned my son and returned to the bathroom to get Ava out of the tub. I turned around to reach for her towel when my daughter again dumped a full glass of water- over the edge of the tub onto her dry and dressed brother and my bathroom floor. Let me just say she is very lucky that I was so stunned by her actions that it took me a couple seconds to register that it really happened. Then...mom took deep breath (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!). She was put straight into bed (allowed only to change into her pajamas and brush her teeth.) Thankfully, it is apparently devastating to be put to bed before one's baby brother; Let's hope it's devastating enough to help her remember to have a little more self control and a little less defiance.

The only upside to having to mop my bathroom floor and rewash the bathroom rugs that were already washed TODAY is that now it is only 6:41 and both of my children are in bed. I don't even know what I'll do with myself! Bathtime was definitely a test in how much self control this mother possesses, but there is now a wonderful, peaceful silence...perhaps Bathtime wasn't such a bad idea after all!