Daddy / Daughter Evening

This past Tuesday, Lauralee was at a wedding shower, and I was left home to baby-wrangle that little ball of energy that we call Emma.

I needed to run a few errands, so I took Emma with me. We went to Smith's Marketplace, where I am always obliged to check the menswear clearance racks for deals. I didn't find any, but I did learn two things: 1) the clearance racks always contain a large number of those skin-tight workout shirts (Under Armour style but with some knockoff name like Energy Zone) in sizes XXL, XXXL and -- yes -- even XXXXL. Now what on earth would an XXXXL man need with a skin-tight workout shirt? And really, if an XXXXL man wanted a skin tight shirt, couldn't he just buy a Medium? The second thing I learned was this: Emma has a razor-sharp ability to identify, grab, and pull price tags off of any article of clothing. It's like she locks-on with her little laser Terminator eye and won't stop until that price tag is ripped off the little plastic price tag holder thingy. We left a wake of them behind our shopping cart. It was embarrassing -- but there is just no way to reattach a ripped price tag to the little plastic pricetag holder thingy.

You know the old comedy routine where somebody is holding a ski or a broom or something on their shoulder, and when they turn around, the ski whacks somebody behind them, and then when they turn around to see what they just whacked, the ski whacks something else on the other side of them? Well, picture a child pulling price tags off of their little plastic pricetag holder thingies and dropping them on the floor. Picture her dad moving the shopping cart so that she can no longer reach those items. While the dad bends down to pick up the pricetags, the child -- undeterred by her father's well-meaning but obviously inadequate attempt to stop the carnage -- coolly reaches over the other side of the shopping cart and begins pulling pricetags off of the clothes on the other side of the aisle. I'm not saying that that's what happened. But I'm not saying that it didn't.

We went over to the shoes to see if I could find some cheap sandals. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did get to hear Emma say "Shoes!" 981 times as she pointed to each and every pair. She sure has a thing for shoes lately. Later, when we were in the Electronics section, I wanted to give her a taste of her own medicine by shouting "Playstation game! Playstation game!" and pointing as we walked by each one. But I didn't. There were too many people there.

We went home and found that Lauralee had left for the wedding shower. I have often stated that there is an apparent correlation between Lauralee leaving me home with Emma in the evening, and that evening being bath night. The last time these two events coincided, there were some near-disasterous results (click here for a refresher).

Bathtime actually went well. Emma usually enjoys her baths -- except when we pour the water over her head to rinse her hair. She still goes into panic mode, holding her breath and wiggling a little. It kind of makes me feel like a CIA agent using a questionably-legal method of torture interrogation technique.

After the bath, I pulled the drain plug and took Emma into her room to dry her off and get her ready for bed. She kept pointing at something across the room and saying (what I thought was) "hat." This is another word that she has learned recently, and she takes great pride in pointing out who is wearing a hat. I didn't see any hats in the room anywhere, so I didn't pay much attention. I set Emma on the ground and started looking for her pajamas. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her run out of her bedroom. I knew I had pulled the plug in the bathtub and that enough time had passed for it to drain, so I wasn't so concerned about her if she wandered into the bathroom. Still, after a minute, I walked out to see where she was, and I discovered three very important things: 1) the washrag had fallen into the tub and covered the drain, so that the bath was still relatively full 2) Emma must've had her Winnie the Pooh in her arms when she fled from her room and 3) Emma hadn't been saying "hat".... she had been saying "bath". Yes, Emma -- no doubt invigorated by the bath she had just received -- had decided that Pooh needed a bath, too, and *plop*, she had dumped him in the bathtub.

(I apologize for using "Pooh," "plop," and "dumped," and "bathtub" in the same sentence. It seemed less graphic when I wrote it than it does now, looking back.)

I snatched it out of there and began thinking of how best to dry this thing, when I had a serious case of deja vu. What had happened last time, when Emma dumped her bear in the bathtub? Well, first, I grabbed the bear out of the bathtub, then while I was trying to figure out how to dry it and had my back turned, she ran away, came back with an armful of books, and dumped them into the water. As soon as I realized this, I spun around to see that old predictable Emma had, indeed, fled the scene of the crime. I wasn't going to be fooled again, so I stood there by the tub and waited for her to return. And right on cue, she came toddling back into the bathroom with her baby doll, ready to throw it. But I would not be outsmarted by a 1-and-a-half-year-old this time! I grabbed that baby doll right out of her hands, finished draining the bathtub, and took Emma back to her room by the arm to read books. Yeah, I pretty much saved the day. I'm not so dumb as I look, or at least how dumb I imagine I look to my toddler.

The moral of the story? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.......you're not gonna fool me again.