Tubby Time is the Chipotle of child rearing. Chipotle, the
burrito restaurant, is terrific – great food, reasonable price, somewhat
healthy. Their barbacoa with just the right ratios of hot sauce, cheese and
sour cream is a culinary feat. At one point, Andrea and I were averaging a
couple of trips to Chipotle a couple of times per week. Then it happened-
Burrito Burnout. Now on most days I would rather stick one of Chipotle’s
plastic forks in my eye than eat one of their burritos.
Of course – of course! – Chipotle is maybe the kids one and
only favorite. As in “Who wants a special treat?” “YAY CHIPOTLE!!!” And all I
can think is… ugh… can’t you kids, just once, choose Flemming’s? But happy kids
means happy life – or something – so we soldier on to Chipotle. I do my best to
mix it up- maybe today is a bowl day or taco day or, in moments of true
desperation, a salad day. I’ll have plenty of time to decide, because
inevitably we choose to go to Chipotle at the same time a girls soccer
tournament let out, so my kids will have a solid 30 minutes to demonstrate to
the world what animals they are while we wait for 25 “not too much sour cream”
and “lots of guacamole” make their way through.
So that’s what Tubby Time is like. There’s nothing
inherently wrong with it – in fact, Tubby Time at one point was pretty fun-
watching the kids splash and make bubble beards and be inappropriate with their privates has some heartwarming entertainment value.
But then, and this was back when we felt the need to bathe
the kids every day, I hit that same Chipotle point – Total Tubby Burnout. We’ve
since cut back but it hasn’t done much to my sense of dread.
The thing is, it’s not the actual bathing itself, which is a
tiny fraction of the Tubby Time process. Here’s a timeline of how Tubby Time
usually plays out:
30 seconds - Getting out Tubby Time
stuff (towels, wash cloths, soap, shampoo), getting undressed, turning on the
water
0:35 - dumping approximately half a
bottle of Spider Man bubble bath stuff nowhere near the rushing water because “I
want to help.”
0:40 – dumping approximately half a
bottle of Hello Kitty bubble bath stuff (which, by the way, is the same exact
stuff, down to the color, as spider man stuff but with a different label)
because “Cody got to do it.”
5:40 – spend five minutes tweaking
the faucet because it is too hot, too cold, too high or too low to get our hair
wet.
5:50 – Cody BATHES FOR 10 SECONDS
10:50 – Spend five minutes begging
Chiara to wash herself
11:10 – Chiara BATHES FOR 20
SECONDS (extra step – she uses conditioner)
21:10 – 10 minutes of splashing,
making soap beards, and being inappropriate with genitalia
26:10 – Dad, who is now bored to
tears, begs the kids to get out for five minutes. Several repeat trips to watch
football ensue.
36:10 – The highly involved
post-bathing process, which involves drying, brushing out hair, moisturizing
skin, clipping nails, and cleaning ears. Mostly this process involves begging
the kids to let you complete these steps, which in total would take about 2
minutes but sans cooperation take 10+.
46:10 – Two warm, clean, soft
children are in jammies and now so amped up they won’t go to bed for weeks.
Plus, as I seem to every time, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a
step. “What do you mean you forgot to clean under their fingernails?” you might
as well ask me before I even begin.
Everyone has chores that, for no good reason, they like or
don’t like. You may think it’s crazy not to like Tubby Time, just like I think
washing dishes or emptying the trash is no big deal. But when the time comes,
when there is an option to do Tubby Time or something else – like stick a fork
in my eye – I’ll usually choose the alternative.
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