Blogging and bathing

I haven't had time to write.

Or, I should say, I haven't had space to write.  Time to myself.  Aloneness with my thoughts.

There is always Bob trying to climb into my lap, or Ben looking over my shoulder.  Oh, how it drives me mad to have someone looking over my shoulder at my unfinished thoughts and making fun of them or typing stupid comments when I step away for a minute.  Not that he means any harm; he's just a jokester.  I guess sometimes I'm just not as good at taking the joke as I wish I was.

I felt like total poo yesterday.  The only thing that cured me was a bath, but the icky feeling came back shortly after.

Lately I've taken to bathing with Bob.  I don't know why I never did before, and I don't remember what made me start -- I just felt like getting in the tub with him one night and it turned out to be just what I needed.  A bath.  I hadn't taken one for years -- at least five, probably ten.

Every night for the past six months since we moved into a home with a tub, I have crouched beside it and leaned over the edge and sat on the floor, while Bob enjoyed all the benefits of the hot soapy water.  But then I slipped in there with him, and suddenly bath time was a relaxing unwind instead of backbreaking  babywashing lifeguard duty.  Not that I ever mind giving Bob a bath -- I totally love it -- but it was certainly never a relaxing activity.  Until now.

Now I am hooked.

We practice blowing bubbles and naming our body parts, we sing, we hug (Bobby usually asks for at least three hugs during the course of one bath), we shoot hoops, we dump water on each other, and in-between all that I just relax.

I just lie in the water, listening to the sound of my boy's splashes and giggles and commentaries, separated by the almost-silence filled with bubbles fizzing away one by one.

I know the ritual can't last forever -- my baby being a son and all -- but for a time I'm just going with it.  And it's perfect.