to bathe or not to bathe......

so there i was, typing a post on peaches for the evening while the little woman ate her dinner. i'd just finished a charming story about mama versus the peach pit rolling squirrels when a loud banging summoned me to the kitchen. little woman was satisfied and alerted me to the fact she was done consuming anything that didn't run away from her by banging her sippy cup against the tray of her high chair. since she was covered in sticky peach juice (the inspiration behind what will be tomorrow evening's post), i figured it would be a good time to throw her into the bathtub.

bath time is the little woman's favorite time of day. as soon as she hears me running water into the tub, she drops whatever she's doing (or throws it, if she happens to be finishing her meal in the high chair) and sprints to the bathroom. she spends quality time with rubber duckies, and i get the remnants of her evening meal hosed off of her. in short, everyone wins.

well, most of the time.

out of her last 5 baths with me, the little woman had left a little something extra behind twice. the first time, she made what is known as (if you're eating, come back to this about an hour after you've finished) "poop soup".

ah, yes. there we were, splashing around without a care in the world. suddenly, there was an extra splash, and just as suddenly, i really cared about getting her out of the tub.

thankfully, i was not alone. so, i called for backup. SO heard my cries, and came running- without baby wipes, which would have been quite useful at a time like this. so, he was sent running back into the other room to retrieve them. i held the child while he dabbed at her dirty derriere like a child picking at his plate full of lima beans. (however, i suppose it's only fair of me to point out that i deal with this sort of thing- minus the bathtub- on a daily basis while he.....does not.)

anyway, he was sent with the mostly cleansed child while i formulated a plan to get the poop out of the tub.

as you may know (and as i learned a couple of years ago when this happened while i was babysitting), the smell of poop is lessened when it is surrounded by water. (this explains why your toilet at home, if functioning properly, doesn't stink nearly as much as, say, and outhouse.) so, draining the water prior to poop removal didn't seem like the wisest idea.

that left going in after it. ugh.

you know what? you haven't lived until you've found yourself fishing for poop with a plastic bag over your hand, sincerely hoping that it didn't leak, lest poop-molecule-laden water wind up inside the bag.

sometimes hoping isn't good enough.

however, i like to think of the adventure as "building up good karma" by sparing little woman's daddy, a good friend of mine, the ordeal of fishing for poop.

he did, however, have to scrub the tub.

the second time it happened, a few days later (i figured "what are the chances of this sort of thing happeneing twice in a row?"), most of the water had already drained from the tub, so little woman's daddy was able to easily remove it from the tub. (i figured it was his turn.)

the next three baths came and went without incident, which brings us to this evening.

we splashed. we played with duckies. we got bubbles all over the place. we let the water out.....and then we heard, "squish".

yep- you guessed it.

from now on, she will take her bath after daddy gets home.