Tub terrors

Although I have lots of pictures and other things to write about since Christmas just passed, I had to write about our latest events during bathtime. The events mostly pertain to Abby being afraid of the bath, and the source of Abby's fears is Matthew. A few weeks ago the kids all took a bath together. We haven't been doing that much lately since they're getting so big, but we were short on time and I decided they could all go in the big bath (in Jason and my room) together. So they all happily got in, then after a few moments we noticed there was, um, stuff, floating around in the tub. After a few moments, I realized what it was (lets just say that Matthew, while he likes to take care of his own wiping on the toilet, is just not very good at it...) and we all got quickly out of the tub and took showers.

So fast forward to now and Abby is terrified of anything floating in the tub (other than toys). Anything. Hair. A speck of lint. And I mean speck...like the size of a grain of finely ground pepper. She gets in the tub and refuses to sit down, asking and pointing at every little thing in the tub, "What's that?" Then I try to scoop it out with my hands or a washcloth (which is not an easy thing to do), while she becomes increasingly terrified and shakes and starts crying as she says, "It's coming closer!" I try to tell her it's just lint from her feet, but she will not be persuaded that it's anything innocuous and continues to basically freak out when my efforts to remove every little bit of lint fail and they come closer to her. She won't even sit in the tub anymore. She used to love the tub. And now it's just a source of terror. Poor Abby. Oh how she cries and cries until I finally take her out of the tub and we decide to take a shower. By we, I mean that she and I take a shower and she's so distraught that she doesn't want to take one by herself and will only take one with me. (So I do feel that I'm being a little manipulated in the showering thing...but will deal with that later). Fortunately, she also likes showers and doesn't mind getting her face wet, so we shower up and she's happy and more importantly, clean.  I hope this phobia doesn't last long, but for now we're dealing with aborted baths and relying on showers.

Winter fun

We've been enjoying the cold and snow lately, and when we haven't been able to go outside much we've been enjoying making cookies. I gave each kid a batch of cookie dough to cut out cookies and the boys really did a good job. Abby mostly pushed her cookie cutters in lightly and repeatedly, not quite making a thorough cut, but she did do a thorough job of eating a lot of dough. In fact, she threw a fit of all fits when I took the dough away and told her she couldn't eat anymore. I had never seen her throw a fit like that, it was extensive and very loud. I have since experienced another fit when I made cookies again a few days later and limited her consumption of cookie dough. That girl really likes dough.