Valerie loves her bath. I almost always get bored with bathtime before she does.
So, last night, since we'd had a rather boring day, I thought I would give her a treat and put bubbles in her bath. She loves bubbles. She gets excited when we blow bubbles, or when I wash dishes, and calls out "bubbles" with sheer toddler joy. She even calls the raindrops on the window bubbles. So I thought bubbles in her bath would be doubly awesome - two of her favorite things at once!
But she had never had a bubble bath before. At least not that she can remember. I gave her one once when she was a baby, but decided it was more work than it was worth, since I had to rinse all the bubbles off after, so it was like having to give her two baths at once. Why do all that extra work when she won't even appreciate it? We'll save bubbles for when she's old enough to care.
Well, she's old enough to care, now. Old enough to care a lot. Old enough to scream bloody murder when her feet disappeared underneath that terrifying blanket of white fluff. I tried to distract her, I showed her how to pick up bubbles and blow them across the tub. It worked for a second, then she looked down and cried again. She kept begging to get out of the tub, crying "all done, all done!"
So I filled her baby tub with clean water to rinse her off, and got into the big tub myself (why waste a nice bubble bath?). She spent the next ten minutes playing happily in a few inches of clean water and reaching over the edge and playing with the bubbles in the big tub that had been so terrifying when they were all over her.
Oh well, that's what I get for trying to make a good thing better. At least now, when I give her a plain old bath in just water, I won't have to feel guilty for depriving her of the joy of bubbles!
