Monday, August 31, 2009

The Worst Thing About Taking A Bath is the Water

As always - The Cast of Characters

Me (The Daddy)
The Bean: Age 7
The Butterfly: Age 5
The Darling Wife

In The Dark Knight, the Joker says "if you're good at something, never do it for free".  If you're bad at something, I say, best not to do it at all.

Let's face it - Dads hate bathing their children.

And let's face it, Mommies have noticed.

It's not like we Stay At Home Dads don't help out.  We perform all the household tasks traditionally associated with fatherhood - cooking, helping with homework, doing laundry and, on occasion, cleaning something up.

But baths.  Don't get me started.

OK, get me started.

I'll do virtually anything to avoid putting the girls in the bath.  This includes the occasional cleaning something up.

Ineptitude is the father's best friend.  Do something badly and it decreases your odds of ever having to do it again.

For one, I can't wash hair.  I can't seem to find the happy medium between no shampoo and the entire bottle.  And rinsing is no picnic either.  No more tears, my ___ (fill in the blank). 

And forget about drying and brushing hair.  Like many dads, it's been years since I've had enough hair of my own to brush, so I'm out of practice.  My girls look like ragamuffins when I get finished with them.

So generally, they will sit in the tub until the water is frigid and they turn blue.  Then I'll toss them towels and say dry yourselves off, which they do about as well as can be expected.

During a recent mini-melt, The Butterfly explained through a series of shouts that "The worst thing about the bath was the water". 

I could not agree more.

3 comments:

  1. hi - i stumbled on your blog via facebook.

    so far, i'm really enjoying :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you...

    Writing it is a lot of fun - never thought I'd actually look forward to Mondays and Thursdays.

    Question though - is the Mama or the Baby crazy?

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  3. Found your blog on FB Networked Blogs--love it! But 14 years of experience as a mommy has taught me one thing--no matter how bad the Daddy is at giving children baths, I refuse to notice...

    ReplyDelete