Clean

A week or so ago, it must have been on a Sunday, because Rob and I were both home for the girls 4:00 meal, I was feeding E. a botttle on the couch and I noticed that I was idly scraping some dried oatmeal off the side of her face. At that moment, Robert looked at me and said " You know, I was always really critical of parents who wouldn't even take the time to wash their kids faces before bringing them out in public." And then we had a hearty laugh, because we carefully wash the girls hands, necks, faces- really virtually any exposed skin- after every meal. Invariably though, as soon as either of them gets into strong light, you notice that they still appear to be covered in patches of whatever it was they just ate. We've learned a lot of valuable lessons the past ten months, one of which is "you can wash your baby as carefully as you can, but you can't make her clean."
Fortunately for us, we have a bathtub. About a month ago, we grew weary of always having to wash the dishes every time we wanted to bathe the girls, so we decided it was time to move them to the "big girl tub." We were a little sorry we didn't do it before, because it is one of their favorite things in the whole world. When L. hears us start to run the water, she starts to giggle like crazy. She laughs through her whole bath and is a big fan of sailing her ducks. E. likes bath time, too- she's not necessarily as enthusiastic as L, but she loves to flop onto her stomach and swim. She has to sit at the back of the tub because she is drawn by forces beyond her control to pull herself up on the faucet. Not that the putting her back there slows her down all that much, as her picture at the top probably reflects. I sometimes feel that she is only happy when she is putting herself in danger of ending up in the doctor's office. You'll note that E. has no problem climbing right on L's legs to get where she wants to be. Directly after their bath and massage, they are usually so tired and they like to cuddle. Right after these pictures were taken, they did one of the really sweet twin things they've started recently. E. will crawl over and lay down across L.'s lap. L. leans down pats E's head and chews on her hair and they both smile. The saliva matted hair sort of defeats the whole purpose of bath time, but it's so adorable to watch, you think that your cute sensors are going to explode.