Bath Time

A couple weeks ago we decided that it was time to move the boys out of the baby bath that sat on our bathroom sink and into the real bathtub. Both boys always enjoyed their baths;. Alex much more so then Kevin. Kevin was happy in the baby bath tub, but Alex got crazy. Alex would get so excited and splash around so much that you practically didn't need to empty out the bath tub when he was done because the water was all over the counter top and floor.

The first time that we did this did not go well at all. Jamie decided that she would try to be super supermom ( had to add an extra super because she is actually a supermom with all that she has to do ) and put the boys in the tub together while I was at work. Lets just say that did not go well. Kevin screamed like he was dieing. He just clung right to the edge of the tub standing up and refusing to sit down or let go of Jamie. Alex was his usual crazy self in the water. He just crawled around everywhere and couldn't be controlled. I'm pretty sure after that first time Jamie was tempted to just bath them in the baby bath forever.

The next bath day we waited until I got home from work. We thought with two of us there we could just go ahead and do them together. Boy was that still a mistake. Alex was still being crazy splashy, and Kevin was still terrified of the water. We have a glass door on our shower, so even though we were both there I couldn't do anything to help, because there wasn't enough room to get in. Jamie just washed Kevin and got him out as fast as possible and let me get Alex.

So for the next few bath times we got smart about it. Jamie would take one and then when she was done I'd grab the other. I'm not really sure who is harder to bathe at this point. Kevin screams, but at least he just standing in one spot crying so its much less work to keep him in one place to bathe.

Then yesterday I got to give the boys baths while Jamie was at work. Without question I knew that I was not going to try and bath them at the same time. Kevin was getting a bit cranky playing so I decided that I would go with him first. Instead of just putting him in the tub this time I decided to let him try on his own, since he likes to crawl into the bathroom and look in the bathtub when there is no water in there. I got him undressed on the bathroom floor and let him crawl over ( well I had to give him a little encouragement to go in that direction once he saw there was water in the tub ). He stood outside the tub for a while and started to get big lip like he might start crying. I just put my arm around him and tried to comfort him a little and it worked; big lip went away without any crying. Then I started splashing a little water up on his hands, and yup you guessed it, big lip came back. With a little comforting I calmed him down while continuing to splash a little water onto his hands. Then he peed all over the outside of the bath tub, and thought that was pretty funny. After a couple minutes I picked him up and put him in the tub. This elicited the biggest of big lips yet. A quick hug though and the big lip slowly started retracting. Little by little I kept splashing water up at him while hugging him and showing him the rubber ducky. After a few more minutes of this he dropped the ducky and sat down to get it. When he did it was like he had an ah ha moment and realized that there really was nothing wrong with the bath tub. For the rest of the bath he happily played with the rubber ducky while I washed him. In the end it took about 20-25 minutes to get him to sit in the tub and then only the usual 5 minutes to wash him up.

Once Kevin was done Alex was real ready to get in the tub. Of course he was happy and it took only the usual 5 minutes of constantly dragging him back to me to wash him up. Even though it was only 5 minutes I think that it might have been more work that Kevin. But even though it was more work I'd rather have a little more work with happy babies.

Hopefully Kevin is ok with baths from now on and maybe we'll get lucky and hyper Alex will calm down a little bit in the bath tub some day.