The Bubble Bath Tornado

The bubble monster in his natural environment.

Water.

Noah.

Water meet Noah. You two will be best of friends.

Bubbles meet water and Noah.

Together you are a hurricane of splashing, laughter, spluttering, squeals of joy, shouting and slipping and sliding of almost catastrophic proportions.

Catastrophic at least for the bathroom.



I know its called a "wet area" for a reason but whoever coined that term has not had the pleasure of meeting "Hurricane Noah".
Monsoon Room or Torrential Downpour area or tidal bore danger seems a little more appropriate given the state of the room after bathtime.

From what I can tell, his goal is to get as much water and soap out of the bath as possible.
And he has to do it the craziest way possible.
Jumping up and down,
stomping the water,
using the ends of the bath as a slippery dip, swinging off the tap (my least favourite!),
covering body in bubbles then leaning over the side and shaking them off,
using his hands and bucketing the water out which seems to be his personal favourite. I think this because he looks directly at me whilst doing this and smiles impishly.

Noah doesn't even need toys in the bath, in fact if I put some in for him, with the hope they might distract him from his wrathful King Poisedon roleplay, he promptly turfs them out onto the floor stating matter of factly " Go away toys, go away!"

Then he turns back to the matter of destruction at hand.

It used to get to me.
I would get all wound up worrying about making sure all the water stayed in the bathtub, that no bubble would stray negligently past the imaginary porcelain boundary onto the tiled floor.

It all came to a head one day when one too many bubbles had escaped(I say escaped, it was more like a mass exodus!). I thought to myself enough is enough.

It was time to take control of the situation and teach Noah some bathroom etiquette.

I knelt down over the lip of the bath and looked Noah in the eye. I gave him my best serious dad, I mean business, face and said "Noah, water stays in the bath. We don't splash water outside the bath okay?"

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

He shifted, contemplating what I had said. I could see the wheels ticking in his mind, taking in the serious tone and demeanour of dad. He knew I meant business.

Then he splashed me.

With a dirty great big smile on his face he scooped up as much as his tiny hands could and soaked me.
The whole top of my shirt was drenched. I opened my eyes and saw him grinning from ear to ear, giggling at his risky behaviour.

Then it clicked.

Why was I being such a dowdy old fart? When did I become such a bore? Why did a bit of water on the floor annoy me? It literally takes 5 seconds to wipe clean with a towel or a mop! But here I was, being the water police, trying to squash the fun out of bathtime.

Bath time is supposes to be fun, water is supposed to be fun. And my son was revelling in it, enjoying every minute of his bath time with such a reckless abandon.

And all I could do was get wound up about the mess.

And with a great whoop I reached down as quickly as I could and began splashing water all over myself, hooting and hollering the whole time.

Noah was in hysterics, he was laughing so hard at daddy being a fool he rolled onto his back and could barely breath. So I splashed even harder and made even more terrible gurgling noises, which got him laughing even harder.

By this time I was completely and utterly drenched head to toe. But Noah and I were both laughing so hard it was worth it.
It felt great to let go of my silly little stresses and join in and have fun with my boy.
Noah also learnt that daddy was not just a kill joy. He was absolutely rapt that I jumped in and had fun with him.
Why hold onto something so trivial as keeping the bathroom floor clear of water, it's ridiculous.

When I eventually stopped splashing myself, Noah looks up at me with his big happy smile and says:

"Again, again!!"

Well... Ok, but just this once.

And maybe next time too.

-Wes-
The Family Man.

P.S- Has something like this ever happened to you? An epiphany striking out of the blue? did you act on it?

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