Shoulders and upper arms: strengthened, especially on the side you most frequently carry Junior.
Thighs and calves: rock hard after hours of jogging and dancing Junior to sleep.
 |
| How To Bathe Baby In Bathtub |
Feet: sore and blistered after ditto.
Lower back: catastrophically fucked.
Stomach muscles: gone to rack and ruin. Excessive pizza intake hasn't helped.
Skin: grey, with red blotches.
Bowels: don't ask.
Hair: emigrating from head to ears and nose.
Pubes: going grey.
Internal organs: withered.
External organ: semi-retired.
Prospects: more of the same.
BATHTIME
This, by strange tradition, is a father's job. Dad gets home from work, carrying briefcase (empty) and mopping brow, and immediately goes into bathroom where photogenic children are already frolicking in mounds of bubbles. We have seen it a thousand times on TV, and now many of us are doing it for ourselves.
I suppose it makes sense: if their mother has been with them all day, she wants nothing more at this stage than to climb into a large glass of white wine. She does not want to wash faces, brush teeth or rescue plastic ducks that have fallen out of the bath for the thirty-eighth time in ten minutes. But even if mother hasn't been with them all day, or father has, it's still father who does bath.
Maybe it's because Entertainer Dad has the knack of forming a tiresome chore into something more fun. Or maybe he has just been outmaneuvered. No one knows for sure.
So it is you who sits on the loo reading old newspapers while your child pours you endless cups of 'tea' out of an old plastic teapot. Somehow it is taken for granted that every child needs a bath every day, although you never did at that age and neither did anyone else. (What is different is that our parents scrubbed us from head to toe with viciously medicated soap that stripped away the top three layers of our skin. Now you are recommended not to use soap at all for the first few months, and sparingly thereafter. This makes much more sense. Children don't actually need to be that clean. Children who grow up on farms famously have stronger immune systems that anybody.)
When your baby is five or six months old it may well discover its genitals. If you think about it, the bath is the perfect place to do this. The rest of the time Junior is encased in nappies. Also, in most cases, there is a big fat stomach in the way, as there will be for you soon, if there isn't already. In soothing warm water the fingers can explore hidden regions more effectively.
Before you know it, your innocent little baby, who cannot walk or talk yet, will be tugging away like a teenager. Maybe I am unusually shockable, but I was taken aback by this, as by the expression of ecstasy that accompanied it. But it's normal behavior. All they know is that it feels nice, and we cannot argue with that. Their tugging has nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with the process of discovering what their body can do, before inhibitions arrive and make them forget again. Don't draw attention to it; just let them get on with it. In the meantime you start to wonder: how did your parents react when you did it? Ten points and a gold star if you have the gumption to ask them.
Incidentally, beware of plastic bath toys. As with soft toys, other people buy them, then they start to breed. The difference is that after a few years soft toys fall apart. Plastic bath toys are here for good. Centuries hence, when mankind has bickered itself into extinction, small grinning yellow non-biodegradable ducks will rule the world. It's only a hunch, but I think they might do it quite well. To find out more, you can check out How To Bathe Baby In Bathtub.