Johnson & Johnson - Propaganda machine

Summer is almost upon us. I celebrated Memorial Day by being vomited upon by both the girls all day Sunday, while H took the girls to a birthday party at his brother's house. Had it not seemed odd for me to show up instead of him, I sure as hell would have allowed him the opportunity to watch, one right after the other, Ice Age, Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure, and Cats and Dogs 2, while running back and forth between the bathroom and the girls to empty bowls of puke. Little Man has not gotten sick yet, but the fact that he is taking his first nap in six weeks does not bode well.

We did, before the tsunami of effluvia began, manage to get a day in at the pool Saturday, which is where the girls probably contracted this plague. I don't care how much chlorine they put in that water, just watching the spluttering that happens while some braces-wearing ten year-old gets dunked by his mates, and knowing how reticent kids are to leave a body of water to get ice cream, never mind urinate, makes me want to gag as well. But at the time , I was not paying much attention to the public health hazard that is a public pool, and we just enjoyed a glorious day in the sun, which, of course, requires sunscreen. And once sunscreen season begins, so does bathing-every-night season.

Yeah, I admit it. In the cold weather months, I don't bathe my kids every night. They all get some pretty dry skin, and as you ladies know, washing your hair every day is actually bad for it, so I take that as nature's way of telling me to take it easy. But once sunscreen and chlorine is involved, you go back to the back-breaking work of cleansing your offspring after a full day of (exhausting) summer fun. I remember fondly, the days pre-children, when H and I would come back from the beach, grab a cold drink, to shower and relax. Now, we face the Herculean task of getting three cranky, hot, children, who an hour before were swimming like fish, but now have the water affinity of a hairless cats, into the tub.*

It's not just in the summer that bathing your kids sucks. It pretty much stinks all year round. Those of you without kids think me a monster. You imagine yourselves, just like in the Johnson & Johnson commercials, bathing your adorable, chubby baby in the baby tub over the kitchen sink, as he splashes playfully and giggles - and that is an accurate interpretation...for the first six months. By that time (or sooner if you have gigantic babies like mine) you've had to move your behemoth to the regular bathtub and, after already spending the day bent over cleaning up toys and changing diapers, you now get to crouch painfully on the bathroom floor, trying to wash dried peach puree out of your little one's thigh folds. This is made infinitely more difficult by the bath seat your kid has to sit in to keep him upright, making it nearly impossible to wash your progeny's business end. At this point though, you still enjoy bath time, letting your kid play with the eight hundred squeaky toys and the puppet washcloths you got at your baby shower.

Fast forward another kid and now you truly, officially, hate bath time. It's a logistical nightmare. When the younger on is tiny, you have to wash him in the baby tub and the older one in the regular one, trying to placate the baby in his or her bouncy seat that you have managed to squeeze into the bathroom with you. Your oldest, accustomed to ample aquatic playtime, vehemently disagrees with the abbreviated version of this game when you haul him out after five minutes. Then, once the little one is old enough to be bathed together with his older sibling, what was once a idyllic, peaceful end to your day, has now turned into a stress-inducing, parent soaking, filthy, kid-soup. You want it over with as quickly as possible. There are no more washcloth puppets, they grew raggedy after so many washings, and you are no longer participating in after-dinner theater anyway. The kids each have one bath toy that does not have a squeaker. Who the hell designs those anyway? Someone without children who does not understand that, despite your religious squeezing at the end of every bath, any toy with a hole will eventually grow mold inside and begin to shit out a black sludge when you empty them.

If you think about it, the concept of a bath is really pretty disgusting. You lie there in your own filth, and if you are my son, drink some of it every night while your mother screams at you. I use this idea to make myself feel better when my children's baths last all of four minutes. Again, I harken back to Laura Ingalls Wilder, who had to bathe in her older sister Mary's leftover bath water. I'm sure she wasn't asking Ma where her Polly Pocket boat or Toy Story squeakies were. She got clean and got the hell out. Why have we turned bath time into a party? There are too many products prolonging children's time in there and creating a nightmare for parents, most of them purchased by grandparents. Do they not remember going through this hell themselves???? In my mother in-law's defense, she did save the water-coloring tablets for her own home, but I don't need any bath time art products. I have made it through my whole damn day and now I'm supposed to let my kids paint with colored soap, or draw on the shower walls with soap crayons, so I not only have to wash them, but them clean my bathroom as well? Are you high?

And the bath safety products, like the aforementioned seat, are handy and do help prevent accidents, but again, do they need to be so jazzy? That protective spout cover does not have to make my tub look like Sesame Place, with Ernie's grinning mug on it, just make, plain, cushy plastic to prevent my kid from cracking his noggin open on the spout. But then again, maybe that would drive them out of the water. It's just too comfortable in there. There were no padded spout covers for me as a kid. My mother would have me tilt my head back under the faucet ,since rinsing out my ridiculous mop of hair wit ha cup was not happening and if I got clonked, it was my own damn fault for not paying attention.** They even sell bath goggles and foam visors for washing kids hair. Have we become that precious that our children can't take some non-animal tested, tear-free shampoo from getting in their eyes?

Thank God #1 is showering herself, cutting my workload by a third and buying #2 and Little Man a few minutes of play time. Not that independent showering is any walk in the park. She takes twenty minutes, soaks the entire bathroom, but still manages to come out with dirty hair clumped with blobs of conditioner, requiring a do-over. As long as she winds up clean through no work of my own, I don't care how long it takes.

The worst part is, I feel no guilt about the fact children in institutions must take longer baths than my kids. I refuse to buy into the hype, not everything has to be a game. When your day has been filled with school, and enriching activities, I am not providing you with the opportunity to do a water ballet. Get clean, get out and get to bed. If you don't like it, it's summer, I have yard, and a hose. Your choice.

*Never mind unpacking all of their crap. It's like Patton's 3rd army went on vacation.
** The best Mother's Day card I ever bought my mother read, "Let's relive a beautiful mother/daughter memory...You hold my head under the faucet and I'll scream"
***Yes, that is Little Man. I wanted to prove I have actually taken at least one photo of my third-born.