How To Bathe a Child

Step 1: Recognize the child needs a bath.

This is also called "try to get out of giving the child a bath". This may sound pretty obvious and straight forward, but it's not. It's deceptively complex, because it involves your spouse. If you're a single parent, you probably never have to worry about bathing your child. Good for you.

The key is to get the other parent to recognize the need for a bath without you.  This usually occurs by way of a poopy diaper blowout, excessive spit-up or projectile vomit, or playing with dirt, all while you're not home.  If you find yourself a part of any of the following phrases, you've past step one and signed up for bath duty: 

"Honey, is this Tuesday?"

"Did we give [insert child's name here] a bath last night?"

"Daddy's little girl needs a bath, doesn't she?!"

Step 2: Prepare the Bath

We've reached the point in my house where step two now requires a full-fledged bath tub. I am fortunate in that I am able to dedicate an entire bathroom to bathing the child. If it's in the budget, I recommend it. I also recommend getting the other parent to prepare the child while you prepare the bath. 

Plug the tub, add warm water, and make sure you have a clean wash cloth and towel. Under no circumstances should you allow a spouse, grandparent, in-law, or anyone but your child to feel the temperature of the water as it will undoubtedly be too warm, too cold, or too wet.

Step 3: Insert Child

At this point we are ready to place the child into the bath.  Hopefully the child is delivered to you ready to just add water.  If not, you'll have to deal with taking off clothes, diapers, etc.  Hint: remove the diaper only at the very last minute to avoid any messy "accidents".

Step 4: Mutter Muffled Colorful Metaphors

I forgot step 2.5: change your clothes.  Hopefully at this stage you're not wearing anything you don't mind getting wet.  I don't just mean with water.  If you didn't have the good sense to read all the steps before you started, well, hopefully you had the good sense to know what to wear.  Once in the water, the child may do one or more of the following:

• "Spank" the water
  
• Try to climb out of the tub
  
• Throw water-laden toys at you
  
• Unplug the drain
  
• French-kiss the faucet
  
• Try to drink all the water
  
• Practice the breast stroke
  

As with those water rides at the theme parks, you will get wet, you may get soaked.  Don't let mom hear you cursing in front of the baby.

Step 5: Clean the Child

Oh yeah, do you have a cup or bucket you can use to wash the soap out of the child's hair?  I guess that was step 2.6. It's just no fun if you have everything you need the first time.  

You'll need to use soap in this step.  I use Johnson's Multi-Purpose No More Tears and thank God for the pump action dispenser.  I usually start with the hair. Cleaning it is easy.  Rinsing out the soap is hard. I recommend a firm but gentle grasp under the child's neck and head with one hand, and the cup or bucket filled with warm, clean water in the other. Now, lower the back of the child's head to the surface of the water.  Just as you're about to dump the clean water over her hair to wash out the soap and she squirms out of your grasp falling face first into the tub, use another colorful metaphor. "Nothing" is what you'll shout to your spouse in the other room who responded to your colorful metaphor with a concerned "what's wrong?" 

Grab the child out of the water. Make sure she's still breathing (yes, choking counts). If the child appears dazed or stunned, use this to your advantage and finish rinsing the soap out of her hair. If the child is not yet dazed or stunned...well, let's just say this works better if the child is dazed or stunned.

At this point, if you had the foresight to bring a cocktail with you to this event, drink it.

Use a washcloth to finish cleaning the rest of the child while she plays in the bathtub. Try to minimize the following:

• Diving
  
• Gulping
  
• Attempting to breath underwater

Step 6: Dry the Child

Here's where it gets fun. If the child has not already done so, unplug the drain. As the water drains, use the bucket or a cup to rinse off any remaining soap. Grab the towel. Stand up and stare at the child in the tub for a moment while pondering how to wrap the towel around the child without getting yourself soaked. Good luck. When the child gets bored and realizes she's in an empty tub and tries to climb out, the brainstorming session is over.  Pick up the child and wrap the towel around her. You should now be completely wet. Bring her to the nursery and set her in the crib so she can't escape. Try not to drop her as she attempts to wriggle from your drunken, frustrated and shivering (now that you're soaked) death grip.

Step 7: Dress the Child

NASA invented Velcro for the benefit of the world, but retailers from Babies "R" Us to Wal-Mart sell baby clothes with no fewer than a gazillion snaps on each outfit. These people clearly don't have children. 

Begin by placing the "snappy" outfit flat on the crib. Lay the child on top of it. Try to keep her flat on her back while you wrestle one arm into the sleeve. This will involve leaning over the crib rail and cutting off blood flow to your lower extremities. When you get the first arm halfway through the sleeve and the child's fist opens up, catching her thumb inside the sleeve and stopping the arm from moving any further, curse loudly. Stand up and look around the room incredulously for the hidden camera as you mutter "what am I doing?" Now grab onto a solid, immovable object as there will be a moment of light-headedness when all the blood rushes from your head back into your legs. Once it passes, grasp the child firmly and quickly remove her from the crib and place her flat on the floor. She should now be temporarily disoriented from trying to figure out why she is not still in the crib. Use that moment to get the first arm through the sleeve. If you haven't finished that cocktail, now is a good time.

With one hand holding the baby down, use your other hand to fish her other arm into the sleeve. If you start to sound like you're in an episode of COPS ("stay down and quit resisting!"), you're doing it right. Use the same approach with the legs. 

If the outfit is equipped with "feet" it gets a little trickier because you have to continue to hold the child down, put her foot in the pajama foot, and snap it closed enough to prevent her from removing the first foot when you move on to the second. It helps to utter a few more colorful metaphors. It also helps if you have three hands. 

Once you get both hands and both feet in place and the outfit snapped securely, hold the child upright. She may smile and/or giggle at you. This is not because she loves you or has gas. You misaligned some of the snaps and will have to redo a good portion of them and she thinks it's funny. If you finished your cocktail, you may have to redo some portions more than once. 

In that case you get the last laugh--unless you forgot to put on the diaper. That was step 6.5.

Stand!

The Day The Air Force Lied To Me

Every year, two of the local Air Force bases, Randolph and Lackland, take turns hosting an air show. This year it was Lackland's turn, which happens to be the one near where I work. I have never actually officially been to an air show, at least not in the sense that you drive a distance in traffic, park far away, take a crowded shuttle bus and stand out on the hot pavement looking into the sky, trying not to blind yourself by the sun or pass or pass out from heat exhaustion. That's why I've never bothered going. Usually, if I'm going to "go", I watch from a distance, be it the home of a relative living nearby, a close-by park, or a freeway I happen to be driving on that goes by the base at the right moment. And after all the visitors we had last month, and all the drama, I was looking forward to spending a weekend sitting at home doing absolutely nothing. Fighting crowds in the hot sun was not in the cards.

On Thursday they parked a NATO AWACS jet on the ramp right next to the street I use to drive to work every day. That piqued my curiosity. Then, Thursday afternoon, the Blue Angels began practicing and I found myself in a golf cart parked as close as I could get to the runway without getting shot...a front row seat to the weekend aerobatics to come. On Friday when the F-22 was flying ear shattering, window rattling, car alarm triggering maneuvers 1000 feet off the ground with afterburner, I was sold. I came home and told Jen we were going to the air show on Saturday. I am an idiot.

We arrived at the air show to a line of traffic, as expected. We parked two miles away and took a shuttle to the front gate.  No surprises so far.  When we got to the gate, Jen went through the metal detector first.  She had our stroller and diaper bag filled with dangerous weapons.  The machine beeped like a dump truck backing up, but nobody cared.  

Kaitlyn and I went through next, but before we did, I emptied my pockets of all metallic contents: my cell phone and the car key.  The car key was on a $30,000 key chain (came with a free car!) with my Swiss Army knife that I purchased in Geneva back in 2003.  The pocket knife would be the point of contention, as the astute MP who just let in three Uzis and a blender informed me: "the Army Swiss knife is not allowed."  

Dammit.  If only I had placed the keys in the diaper bag, next to the grenades.  I was given two choices: 1) return to the car and secure the item there or 2) drop it into a box and pick it up when I leave.  

The trip back to the car was definitely a one way proposition at this point, I had no intentions of making more than one round trip.  The no-brainer here was to drop the knife into the box and pick it up on my way out.  Thinking it would make the knife easier to find later, I asked the guard if I should leave the key on the ring.  This is where I think I really went wrong.  Here's a woman who just let 25 pounds of C4 onto a military base disguised as a stroller, calls my knife an "Army Swiss", and I'm taking her at her word.  I must be a sucker for a woman in uniform.  She responded, "you probably shouldn't".  

Now, I spent six years in college, passed all the AP English classes in high school, and consider myself to be a halfway decent writer.  I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I like to think I have a mastery of the English language most people just don't have.  If you tell me I "probably" 

shouldn't do something, that to me indicates that I could do it.  We could call it option A even, and option A would be a perfectly valid option because it would accomplish the end goal, but you're suggestion is that we consider option B.  Again, I could drop the key chain, $400 laser etched key, and $30 pocket knife with sentimental value that makes it priceless into the box and pick it all up later, but you're suggesting an alternative.  You're wearing a uniform, a sidearm, a funny looking hat, I'm going to go ahead and pursue option B.  

So thankfully, I removed the key from the $30,000 key chain and pocket knife with priceless sentimental value.  I dropped the latter two items, attached for easy visual identification later, into the box.

Kaitlyn had a blast, although I don't think she really cared about the planes.  She likes to be outside, people watch, and sleep in the stroller.  I like to take pictures of the sky where, moments before, jets were flying by.  By the way, the Blue Angels performed with only five of their six jets. You can read why here.

At 5:00, the air show was closing and we were hot, sticky, sunburned, and ready to go home.  I stopped at a port-a-potty to pee.  When I came out, I walked up to the portable sink, the kind with one of those foot pedals you use to pump the water.  I dispensed soap on my hands, rubbed them together, and pedaled. Air hissed out onto my dry soapy hands.  I tried the other sink.  They were both out of water. With dry soapy hands we walked back to the gate from whence we entered.  

There was an officer standing at the table where just a few hours ago I dropped my $30,000 key chain and pocket knife with priceless sentimental value into a box.  There were now several of the boxes on the table.  Upon seeing me, and before I had a chance to say anything, the officer asked “are you hear to pick up a knife?”  

How Nostradamus of him.  I told him I was.  He told me, in so many words, "tough shit". I honestly thought he was kidding and said as much.  He told me that he was not kidding; entering a military base is like entering an airport and he is not able to return anything surrendered to the “amnesty box”, as he called it.  He apologized for the "miscommunication".  I was speechless.  

Suddenly the box that I "shouldn't" drop my car key into had become an admission of guilt and a means of reparations and absolution--amnesty, if you will--for the high crime of buying a pocket knife in Switzerland five years ago and attaching it to my key chain.  I almost cried.  

I found the guy's supervisor and pleaded my case to him.  I expressed my extreme dissatisfaction at the situation only to be "reassured" that it had been happening all day to lots of other people. Celebrate your incompetence.  Good strategy.  We use it a lot where I work, too.  Now I sort of felt a kinship with this asshole, and it was clear to me by now that I was never going to see my overpriced key chain or priceless pocket knife again.  So I did the only thing left to do; I thanked the man for his service to our country, and I shook his hand.  

In retrospect (hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?) I should have also told him to check the water supply in the portable sinks.

It's the Teeth, Stupid!

After the last post, I got no sympathy for the fact that my new cell phone now swims with the fishes, but I got a couple of nasty emails from folks wanting to know if the baby is OK, as if that was the point of the story.  I wasn't intentionally leaving everyone in the dark.  When caution is thrown to the wind, you don't readily know what the outcome is going to be.  Now, a week later, I can tell you that the child is fine.  I took medical school pass/fail, but in my professional opinion, it was the four teeth that recently appeared causing most of her symptoms.  

Since her discharge from the ER, Miss K has maintained a normal temperature and is pretty much back to her usual self, chasing the dog around the house and working on the manuscript for her book: Physics and You, a Babies Guide to the World.  This past weekend she went Trick Or Treating for Halloween and took in an air show on Saturday afternoon, which you will be hearing all about tomorrow. Until then, enjoy the Halloween photos.

From Miss K's First Halloween