![\"\"](\"http:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/IMG_3691-bw.jpg\" "\\"IMG_3691-bw\\"")
<\/p>\nAs the chief child-bather around here, I have some rules about splashing — or more specifically, not splashing *me.* But recently I’ve been wondering: what’s most important here? <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
p{color:gray}. Photo: This isn’t a recent photo of Rosie, and it’s not even in our own bathtub (but at “Circle M Farm”:http:\/\/www.circlemfarm.com\/). But it sure is cute, ain’t it?<\/p>\n
We bathe our girls almost every night. I really wanted it to be part of our bedtime routine, since I had inconsistent bathing habits in my own childhood. Now the girls really, truly enjoy baths, so we’re stuck with it (in a good way). :) We began when they were babies (after we got over our fears and finally bathed Lucy for the first time when she was nearly “one month old”:\/news\/2006\/one-month\/). For a long time, Jon was the bath-master (and a fine job he did!), but somehow that job was transferred to me when both girls got in the tub. (Not that I’m complaining, just sayin’.) The girls love bath time and will happily play in the water until their teeth begin to chatter while they serve each other “soup” and get busy “washing the tub” before their “big party.” Water = loads of fun here at the Boyd house. <\/p>\n
Sometimes, everything goes smoothly — the girls invent watery games, Mama cleans the sink and toilet, and everyone gets out of the tub at an appropriate time. But there are times that the games get overly splashy, and that makes Mama grumpy. Grumpy, I say! Too much splashing means more clean-up for me, not to mention the water that unintentionally ends up on the body of the bath-master. At the end of a full day, my patience for this splashing is limited — but I have conflicted feelings about this.<\/p>\n
On one hand, I feel strongly that, in parenting, a person needs to know their own limits and respect them. We are not in for a sprint of martyrdom here. It won’t do me any good to pretend that I enjoy cleaning up puddles of water from the floor every night. I encourage splashing in kiddie pools, in backyard sprinklers, at the beach, and in our neighborhood “summer pools”:\/news\/2010\/twenty-one-minutes\/. Splashing is so much fun on a hot day! I merely request a little courtesy in the splashing, namely this particular question: “Mama, may I splash you?” and a respectful compliance with the answer. Is this unreasonable? It is not.<\/p>\n
But on the other hand, I am aware of the joy of childhood, the freedom of splashing, and the “what’s-the-big-deal?” factor in a little bit of water. Watching “this video”:\/news\/2008\/free-swim\/ of Lucy years ago reminded me about how much fun this girl has splashing in the water. Let me hasten to add that, at the time of this video, Lucy was much smaller, not as strong, hadn’t figured out the best ways to make the biggest splash (like moving her entire body back and forth in the tub until the water spills over the edge), and she was content with a much smaller quantity of water. But still, it’s only water, right? <\/p>\n
It’s a tough situation, with several possible outcomes:<\/p>\n
* I could keep asserting our mildly effective “only low-splashing” rules, resigning myself to get grumpy every once in awhile
\n* I could ask Jon to be the post-bath water-clean-up master (which only works if he doesn’t have a meeting at night)
\n* I could find a rubber suit, lots of towels, and suck it up
\n* I could just bathe one child at a time<\/p>\n
Any of these ideas could probably work. Currently, I’ve been frequently giving the girls showers — quicker and less splashing, but really best as a summer option since I inevitably get a little wet in the process. But this whole issue is a helpful snapshot, at this point in child-rearing, of *the tension between honoring one’s own desires and yielding to the spirit of the child.* I know there will come a day when the girls bathe themselves, and I’ll miss these moments. (When I even _think_ about it, I already do.) I’d just like to get there by enjoying my daughters *and* being 100% Ann Boyd at the same time. May it be so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the chief child-bather around here, I have some rules about splashing — or more specifically, not splashing *me.* But recently I’ve been wondering: what’s most important here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6450"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6557,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6450\/revisions\/6557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}