My standards of cleanliness for my daughter are inherently blasé; a combo platter of fatigue topped with nonchalance and a quick garnish of laziness. You pissed all down your legs? Nothing a few wet wipes can’t handle! Ample basil for our winter pasta sauces growing in the dirt under your fingernails? Perfect – let’s get cooking! Once when she was about 18 months old I went to scrub behind her ears and found a small cartel of evil lodged there. Because it was the FIRST TIME I remembered to even clean that zone.
This all started because, ugh, bath time.
It wasn’t always this way. She and I hung out in a steamy bathroom every night that first year. Like two old friends with our backs to the wall of a woody sauna, one leg propped up while lazily smoking Gauloises and debating literature (minus the smoking and talking). One time I even wore a beret and cranked some scratchy Piaf while regaling her with fine Grade 11 high school French tales of “Comme ci, Comme ca” et “Sur la table!”
Like all the unique parenting moments of the first year, bath time soon turned into another chore that suuuucked, so eventually the daily dunk turned into twice-a-week romps with Grandma doing one of them. Now that she’s three, she entertains herself by splashing around and drinking half the tub (my gag reflex loved that last part), so I am mostly in there just to prevent her from going full Ariel. Rocking to keep my ass from falling asleep on the hard toilet seat and swiping through my phone to catch up on all the cool shit other people did that day, I only really snap to attention when half the tub is in my socks.
Anyway, one of the ancient squirt toys she plays with had developed some kind of black crust on the insides that had eventually forced its way out. When she spotted a tiny fleck of black in the tub we went to LEVEL 8 SHIT CRISIS in a fucking hurry. I grabbed her arm before she vaulted out of the tub to hide under the fridge and explained it was just tub dirt! Relax. Mommy will get it out.
Except it wasn’t tub dirt.
I didn’t know it yet, but it was my personal Moby Dick.
For about 5 minutes (count those out slowly in your head – that’s still a lot of time), I tried and failed at scooping this tiny little fucker out of that bathtub. During that time, I went through the many stages of grief – disbelief that again and again I had NOT snagged it; anger as it slid under a toy or cluster of bubbles; manic hysteria when I almost had it pinned down like a piece of egg shell and she bumped me with her elbow, cocked on her hip, then said “You don’t have to be rude about it, Mommy.” I barely choked back a whisper-scream of “FUCK YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR.”
I chased this piece of rot around that tub like a madman, bent in half, lower back screaming, one full sweatered arm drenched, talking to it slowly like a serial killer seducing his prey and all the while holding in all the real words I wanted to belch out.
I stopped at one point and leaned against the wall, exhaled up into my bangs, and said with a laugh that I recognized as 87% crazy, “IIII uh, I don’t think Mommy is going to be able to get it.” Eyes darting, fever brewing, heartbeat pounding, I started to imagine myself in a softly sunny meadow. Long grass. A horse whinny in the distance. Chilled wine in my hand. And a machine gun in the other, aimed at the tub. The whine that ripped fresh from her mouth jolted me back.
My last ditch effort was to attempt a big scoop out with a large Tupperware vessel.
It worked. In one grand plunge of success I fished that fucker out of the tub along with half the bathwater, and threw my other fist to the sky in heavy metal triumph.
Those bath toys got tossed out. My arm dried. She settled in front of her iPad in sweet smelling jammies and damp hair, quickly forgetting all about the battle she’d witnessed.
The moments that test you in life don’t announce themselves in boldface. They are as quiet and sneaky as a bath tub shit, and I am proud to say that last week I emerged victorious. Wet and wild and proud – I WON.
11 Comments
You are wonderful. Seriously. TUPPERWARE?
Brooke — this is awesome! I can’t even remember how many times I almost face dived into the tub, trying to fish something out! And I’ll never quite understand why bathwater is such a delicacy to kids. Gross little monsters.
Oh God. I have so done this. BAHAHA!
Also: “she straddled the side of the tub like the shit had teeth and a taste for the ass from whence it came”? Consider this plagiarized.
I was laughing so much through this. I think we have all been there!
So good to know other kids have pooped in the tub. I just have drained the water out and then used the shower to just wash it all down! Your poop episode sounds like way more of an adventure!
I’ve experienced the poop in the tub photo BOMB. My hubby was giving the kids a nice bath while I was at work and the littlest left a floating present. The oldest hopped right out in total fear of the turd and my husband took an extra minute to take a photo of the youngest happily playing around with the poop floating in the background. Weird text photo to get on your break at work 🙂
Haven’t we all been there? Except it’s not nearly so funny in real life as it is when you are the one retelling. Ridiculous talent! Our oldest’s first bath photo (with daddy’s hairy legs and all) was a poop in the tub photo bomb, except being a newborn, it was more a yellowish brown poop cloud. Awesome.
All those beautiful words and the ones that got me good are LEVEL 8 SHIT CRISIS. Baaahahahaha. Who knew the battles we feared the least would be the ones to bring us to our knees? Young me would have thought the mom me batshit fucking nuts.
And the black crap in the bath toys? BEEN THERE. Hasta la vista, you nasty little uncleanable shits. We need to invent ones that you can split in half to wash and put back together. We’d be gazillionares.
xxx+o
The first time I realized that this black stuff builds up in bath toys I was pretty shocked. I wondered how I hadn’t figured out earlier that this happens. When my twins turned 3 my husband trained them to take showers (which they love). Baths are fairly infrequent now.
Hilarious! We’ve had many battles with what I call “the black slime of doom” from the squirty toys. Don’t even get me started on the number of times my first son pooped in the tub when he was a baby. Try fishing those little yellow curds out. *Shudder*
*dies laughing* I love it. God I do NOT miss that nasty black crap that accumulates inside toys.
Pro tip: Keep a small bucket in or near the tub. Fill it with water post-bath, and toss the tub toys in, along with a healthy dollop of bleach. It keeps the crap at bay, and next bath, you just dump it on the drain, rinse the bucket and toys with a quick swish, and the bucket becomes a toy.
I was SO not the Martha Stewart type that was going to poke around in those damn squeakers with a toothpick after grossness, and my kids were OCD for a while about their little floating ducks and frogs. Once they hit the age where they no longer cared, those things hit the trash faster than your toddler exiting a poop-contaminated tub. >.<