This Magic Moment
Brought to you by Johnson & Johnson...
Yesterday morning Jack's umbilical cord fell off in his diaper. I've been waiting for this moment ever since I started running my fingers through his dark hair, turning him into a little grease monkey- which is what easily happens to newborn hair when you can't keep your fingers out of it- the cord falling off meant he could now have a real bath and a good hair-washin'.
So being the meticulous and thorough mother that I am (ha!) I devoted myself to cleaning the bathtub with a hard scrub of Tilex before bathing him last night. (I don't do baby tubs because it's one more thing to keep clean, so we just bath him on our legs, facing us... the very same reason I don't do training potties- they frighten me- and I choose not potty train until they're big enough to climb on the tall toilet.)
Tub cleaned and sterilized, I started a bath and Shaun undressed Jack and brought him to me. We laid a warm baby wash cloth across his chest and drizzled him with water. He LOVED it. My other kids cried or at least whimpered through their first bath, but not Jack. It's like he was born understanding the concept "getting a little R&R." So relaxed was he, that he sprayed a gleeful fountain of joy two feet into the air; the sweetest fountain to ever grace a bathtub, and a phenomenon that never ceases to get a good laugh out of the doting parents.
So we break out the camera and coo and goo over him in sappy high pitches. He eats it up. He stretches and kicks in the literal lap of luxury. And then comes the next sign of true relaxation- the kind that doesn't so much fountain but surprises underwater like the explosion of squid ink and quickly spreads in rapid contamination.
Third time parents that we are, we both panicked. Okay, well not really. It was really more of a fun and humorous sort of what now frenzy; a can you believe this is really the last time we're going to have this much fun in the newborn realms moment.
Shaun started a shower. Thus, Jack had his first bath and his first shower all in one night... all in the same 10 minutes or so. What an accomplishment. Kudos, wee one. Wee wee-weeing one.
And he loved the shower every bit as much as the bath, bobbing his head back to look up at me and identifying the sound that once sprayed him through the skin of my stomach every morning.
When the tub had drained it was quite a sight. Hard to believe something so tiny can make such a mess. It was like the cake ring the Cat in the Hat left in the bathtub... only more like mustard instead of pink icing. That breast milk is something, I tell you- an entire bottle of condiment could've done less damage.
But when Shaun dressed him in a clean cotton sleeper that smelled of Dreft, when his hair was brushed and he was good and tired from wailing in the cold air, it was all worth it. When I nursed him, I looked down on a peaceful face and soft, shiny hair. Clean hair. And then he slept. The perfect ending...
And then he slept.
