Bathtub Fears

I need to blog about this before I forget…

Monday night Lily was sick with a stomach bug. She only threw up once but was very lethargic all day long. When it was time for a bath, I had to do a lot…I mean A LOT… of persuading to get her in the tub because she was pitching a nasty fit about it. We talked about throw up germs and how nasty they are and how they crawl all over her body and if they aren’t washed away in the tub she will carry the throw up germs to her friends at school and then all of them will get sick and have to stay home with their mommies and she would have no one to play with at school. How’s that for a run-on sentence? Then I made a deal with her that if she would let me bathe her first, then I would stick my feet in the water and she could bathe my feet. She finally got in the tub and I had the cleanest feet I’ve ever had.  I just assumed her not wanting to get in the tub was because she didn’t feel well.

Wednesday night it was time for another bath. {We bathe her every other night unless, of course, she is just disgusting. Don’t know if that’s proper parenting etiquette or not, but that’s what we do.} She watched the water fill up, but the second she stepped in the tub she starting screaming, stomping, and sliding all over the tub. She refused to sit down and after she fell twice, we decided that being dirty is safer than hitting her head on something.

Thursday night my mom kept Lily while Brent and I went to Bible study. I warned her about the dangers of bathing Lily lately but asked her to at least try. Again, Lily watched my mom fill up the tub and everything was fine until she got in the tub. The fit started again, so my mom pulled her out. Lily really needed a good bath so my mom filled up one side of the kitchen sink with tons of bubbly water and put Lily in the other side and bathed her in the sink like she was 10 days old. What did Lily talk about all night long after we picked her up? How much fun she had taking a bath in the sink! And once a child considers an activity fun it has to be done that way every time. I mentioned to Brent that we will just have to bathe her in the sink until she gets over this no bathtub season in her life. He said I was ridiculous to think we were going to start bathing a nearly 3 foot tall 27 pound child in the kitchen sink.

If there’s anything I’ve learned about Lily, she pitches fits for two reasons: 1)She doesn’t want to do what you’ve asked her to do, or 2) She is fearful of something. I knew her reasons for not getting in the tub had to be #2 because it’s just weird that she would all of the sudden not want to play with her toys in the water.

On the way home from my mom’s house I asked Lily why she didn’t like to take baths in the tub anymore.

“Dairs too much haiw in it” {There’s too much hair in it}.
Then she reminded me that the itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout, but when it rained, he got washed out.

My conclusion…she must think the hair that gets caught in the drain is the spider that washed out of the spout when we turned the water on.

We had a long talk about how hair and spiders are two different things, neither of which we need to be scared of. And I promised I would always check for hair in the drain and remove it before every bath from now until forever.