The Magazine and Daily Blog of Catholic Living
Faith & Family Live is where everyday moms offer one another inspiration, support, and
encouragement in Catholic living. Anyone grappling with the meaning of life or the cleaning of laundry is
welcome here. Read the blog, check out our magazine, join our community, learn more
about our mission, and come on in! READ MORE
Meet the Faith & Family bloggers. We invite you to join us in encouraging and helping the Faith & Family community grow in faith!
Danielle Bean
Danielle Bean, a mother of eight, is Editorial Director of Faith & Family. She is author of My Cup of Tea: Musings of a Catholic Mom (Pauline 2005) and Mom to Mom, Day to Day: Advice and Support for Catholic Living (Pauline 2007). Though she once struggled to separate her life …
Read My Posts
Rachel Balducci
Rachel Balducci is married to Paul and together they are the parents of five lively boys. Besides being a mom, she is also a writer and a newspaper columnist for the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia. For the past four years, she has maintained her personal blog at Testosterhome.net where she …
Read My Posts
Lisa Hendey
Lisa Hendey is the founder and editor of CatholicMom.com, a Catholic web site focusing on the Catholic faith, Catholic parenting and family life, and Catholic cultural topics. Most recently she has authored The Handbook for Catholic Moms. Lisa is also employed as webmaster for her parish web sites. …
Read My Posts
Arwen Mosher
Arwen Mosher lives in southeastern Michigan with her husband Bryan and their young children Camilla and Blaise. She has a bachelor's degree in theology. She dreads laundry, craves sleep, loves to read novels and do logic puzzles, and can't live without tea. Her personal blog site is ABC Family. …
Read My Posts
Rebecca Teti
Rebecca Teti is married to Dennis and has four children (3 boys, 1 girl) who -- like yours no doubt -- are pious and kind, gorgeous, and can spin flax into gold. A Washington, DC, native, she converted to Catholicism while an undergrad at the U. Dallas, where she double-majored in …
Read My Posts
Robyn Lee
Robyn Lee is the managing editor of Faith & Family magazine. She is (yikes!) an almost 30 year-old, single lady, living in Connecticut with her two cousins in a small bungalow-style kit house built by her great uncle in the 1950s. She also conveniently lives next door to her sister, brother-in-law …
Read My Posts
Hallie Lord
Hallie Lord married her dashing husband, Dan, in the fall of 2001 (the same year, coincidentally, that she joyfully converted to the Catholic faith). They now happily reside in the deep South with their two energetic boys and two very sassy girls. In her *ample* spare time, Hallie enjoys cheap wine, …
Read My Posts
Fr John Bartunek, LC, STL, received his BA in History from Stanford University in 1990, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He comes from an evangelical Christian background and became a member of the Catholic Church in 1991. After college he worked as a high school history teacher, drama director, and …
Read My Posts
Melissa Wiley
Melissa Wiley is a homeschooling mother of six and the author of The Martha Years and The Charlotte Years, two series of books about the ancestors of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She blogs about children’s books, family, and home education at Here in the Bonny Glen.
Read My Posts
advice | coffee talk | discussion | parenting | lent | christmas | prayer | family | children | moms | books | recipes | podcast | cleaning | encouragement | love | sharing | education | babies | learning | housekeeping | relationships | saints | links | couples | traditions | humor | small successes | fertility | food | art | school | homeschool | pregnancy | nfp | casual fridays | fun | marriage | giveaway | sex | television | pro-life | tips | joy | saints of christmas | technology | laundry | faith | career | support | videos | blogging | cooking | resolutions | new media | kids | benedict xvi | fashion | haiti | time management | super bowl | charity | teens | video | clutter | winter | questions | new years | women | toddlers | jesus | preferences | photos | clothing | priests | sports | tradition | 40 bags | homemade | vegetables | mass | dinner | mary | forgiveness | seasons | style | celebration | gifts | ideas | shopping | book | nature | modesty | health | time | work | music | spouse | fasting | beauty |
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Monday, December 21, 2009 9:47 PM
My husband goes into the bathroom to draw a bath for our son, and as soon as he hears the water running, Blaise makes a bee-line for the tub. He pulls himself up on the edge and nearly topples in, so desperate is he to reach the water with his outstretched hands.
We take pity on him and get him into the bath while it’s still being filled, and he takes position by the faucet, his face only a few inches from the deluge. Fat dimpled baby hands flick through the streaming water. Within seconds he looks as though he’s been swimming, his face covered with droplets. He’s thrilled.
When Blaise is in the bath, one of us must kneel by the tub the entire time, arms outstretched to catch the baby when he topples. He concentrates on trying to stand up over and over again - toppling doesn’t seem to deter him - and to splash as much water out as he possibly can. I think maybe he sets himself a goal of ending bathtime with more water out of the tub than in it!
Last night we gave Blaise and Camilla a bath together, and took him out first to get him into his pajamas. He wailed from the moment we lifted him out of the bath, through being diapered and dressed, until we finally released him. At that point he crawled back into the bathroom, pulled himself up on the tub, and leaned over to splash one hand in the water. He turned and grinned at me, all sign of his tears completely gone.
The kid loves the bath. It’s a surprise to us, because our daughter has always been a reluctant bather. Blaise cries when you take him out of the bath; Camilla used to cry when you put her into the bath. Over the three years of her life her hatred of baths has waxed and waned, but I expect the struggle with her will continue for many years to come.
So we’ve got one child who thinks baths are the Worst Thing Ever and one who things they’re the Best Thing Ever. If nothing else, it keeps life interesting.
What’s the bath situation at your house?
Page 1 of 1 pages
Our first son loved the bath. It was a nightly ritual for us to give him a bath and then a feed just before bed.
Boy were we shocked when son number 2 came along and hated the bath with a big capital H.
Bath time was so stressful with him that I only bathed him every other day.
These two boys are now 18 and 16. I cannot remember any of the other children hating the bath like Sam. I hope the baby I am expecting in February will like the bath too.
Therese, I had to laugh at “I only bathed him every other day.” You’re a stronger woman than I am! With bath-hating Camilla, we’d go as long as possible between baths and only give her one when she got really dirty. On one particular occasion I remember she went NINE days without one. I’m impressed that you were dedicated enough to keep bathing a bath-hater so often!
My 23-month old son has absolutely loved the bath since he was a couple of months old. Even as a newborn, he tolerated it without screaming the way most newborns do. He also loves taking showers with his Daddy, which is a huge timesaver for Mom!
My almost-two daughter Sophie thinks that baths are the best thing ever. Even mention the word and she’s stripping off her clothes and dumping her toys into the tub. But she used to think they were the worst and the entire bath time was one long scream after another. It changed literally overnight. One day she was hating it and then suddenly she was fine. Bella our three year old has gone back and forth between loving baths and hating them and merely tolerating them.
When you said that he leans over the edge & almost topples in you reminded me of when DS#2 about 18 months & actually did that one day…fully clothed. His big brother was already in the tub & we were starting to get him ready to go in too, but he just didn’t want to wait. Thankfully the water wasn’t too deep, he didn’t hit head on the bottom, & I was right there to catch him. He thought it was fun, so from then on we had to be extra vigilant at bathtime!
Sound like you will have swimmer on your hands!
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
Todd and Sarah Palin’s infant son Trig has brought new attention to the frightening fact that 90 percent of children diagnosed prenatally with Down Syndrome are aborted. This tiny baby is bringing new hope to people with Down Syndrome and those who love them. This tiny baby presents a real threat to the culture of death.
Print Blog
Email a Friend