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Thursday, January 10, 2008

Splish Spalsh!

How do you turn a whiny, needy, teething baby into the happiest baby in the world?

In our family you put them in the bathtub.


Some of my fondest childhood memories are of bath time or playing in the pool. I was a regular water baby--when I was two and we lived in California, I would strip off all of my clothes every time I saw water, always ready for a swim. I still like water--but only if it's warm. Dubai was great.

I'm sure that Josie spent 50% of her life in the bath tub...or running down to the lakes. Josie was a run-away baby and we lived about a 5 or 10 minute walk from both Sunshine and Emerson lakes. Whenever Josie went missing that was the first place we checked. Lucky for us, her little legs didn't ever get her quite into the lakes before we caught up with her.

We all liked the water and I guess Rachel is just following in her aunts' and uncles' (and mommy's) footsteps.


She spent a good forty minutes playing in the tub, all by herself. All I had to do was make sure she didn't drown, which was a nice break from the song-and-dance routine I've been pulling all day, everyday this past week. Her poor little teeth are just causing her heartache and she is not afraid to share her pain with the world.

One of our current favorite songs goes like this:

If you're teething and you know it throw your head backwards and whine at mom.
If you're teething and you know it throw your head backwards and whine at mom.
If you're teething and you know it and you're not afraid to show it,
If you're teething and you know it
throw you head backwards and whine at mom.

Rachel knows all the actions to that song!


More often than not she's sucking on her lower lip just whining away. She cries whenever mommy's not there. She hasn't been sleeping well. She wants to eat all the time. She won't play by herself. Yikes! Can we stop with one tooth? That's all she needs, right? I am not sure I can do this 20 or 30 more times!


Ahh...but tub time was marvelous. We might be doing this more often now. Usually I just shower with her because it uses less time and water, but she absolutely enjoyed herself this afternoon.





I could hardly get her to look up at the camera and whenever I offered to take her out of the tub she would pull a face at me or push my hands away and then look away really fast and start splashing and playing again.

Finally when she was wrinkly as a prune and shaking from the cold, I pulled the plug. She still wouldn't come willingly so I let her sit in the tub until all the water had drained out. Only then did she reach up for me when I offered her my hands. Crazy little baby!

We'll have to try to take her swimming sometime, if that diaper ban has been lifted. I think she'd have a grand time in a pool!

Blue, blue eyes(she totally looks like Piper in some of these pictures, I think)

9 comments:

  1. Nancy,
    I feel your pain. We are currently experiencing the joy of teething in our household as well. Except multiply it by 10, because they are molars. I think of the last 14 nights, Taber and I have had maybe 2 or 3 good nights of sleep. Maybe I'll take your lead and throw my munchkins in the bath.

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  2. I am so glad Miriam got several teeth at a time. Especially at the end there - there were like four or five coming in at once. Yes, it was worse while it lasted, but then we were DONE! I wish the same for you.

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  3. Rachel's actually got her two front bottom ones coming in--that we can see. One is almost through and it looks so painful...the other is just a few days behind. :) So maybe it won't be so time consuming after all...

    And Kim, how are you even surviving? Maybe we should switch babies for a while and then when I get Rachel back I'll be glad there's only one of her!

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  4. My kids all love bathtime.. it's their favorite! If I ever want to "get rid of" them or rid myself of them.. whichever sounds most pleasant is the one I mean... I send them for a bath... what a miraculous fortyfive or sometimes an hour's worth of time! I hardly let them bathe before bedtime though, as this disrupts their ability to sleep... they must be born for the water hey?!!!

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  5. So funny that me, a person who spent a half a lifetime afraid of the water, has spawned two generations of couple water babies! And I think Rachel does resemble Piper, too.

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  6. Yay! Piper has a cousin who looks like her :)

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  7. I love those toys! For my job on campus I was in charge of buying a LOAD of toys for a research study. I'm talking bags and bags and bags of toys. Guess which ones were the coolest? those stacking bowls/balls that Rachel is playing with in the tub!

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  8. Ummm, yeah! They keep Andrew and I entertained! You can do so much with them! Whoever designed them was a genius.

    Stack them...make balls...nest them...Yeah...they are pretty much the coolest things ever. And Rachel loves the bell-head thing that came with it. That didn't go in the tub though. :)

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  9. Ugh.... teething! Yikes! I'm so sorry but hurray for finding joy in bath time! She is too cute!!!

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