Saving Bath Time

Isaiah has been hating the bath lately. I mean, total melt-down, everyone's miserable, really hating it! It's weird because he used to love the bath, so I'm not sure what happened, but I was determined to do something! (Side note: We had already tried a lot of stuff hoping to return bath time to the happy days gone by!)

I had seen directions for making your own bath crayons in Super Baby Food that I had wanted to try. I thought maybe Isaiah would enjoy helping to make them, plus they wouldn't have all that junk I can't even pronounce like the ones you buy in the store. So, we gave it a try. Isaiah was super excited about the idea and couldn't wait to do it once I told him.
Basically, you use soap flakes or grate mild bar soap. I didn't know where to find soap flakes, so we grated bars of Ivory soap. The directions say to add one tablespoon of hot water slowly to 1/4 cup of soap flakes. It was hard to stir, so I stirred while Isaiah put in the water and food coloring. Asking a toddler to pour something in slowly is a little worthless, but he was enjoying our project. We put it into sections of an ice cube tray and let it dry. At some point a couple days later we popped it out to let the bottom dry better as well.
Isaiah told everyone who came over about our bath crayons and showed them off. As you can see from the picture, they weren't pretty! Unfortunately, their function was about as poor as they look. They were fun to try but not very effective at writing/drawing in the bath. Maybe more food coloring next time? They get slimy pretty quickly, too.

So, the bath crayons were not terribly successful, and I still have a ziploc bag of grated soap, but the experience was fun, and Isaiah actually got excited about bath time to use them. It didn't entirely save bath time, though, and the funny random thing that seems to have come to the rescue, at least for now, is a song I pulled out on a whim from Sesame Street. In the Puddle Jumping episode open, Baby Bear sings a song about singing in the shower. I have been married long enough to a man who makes up songs or changes the words constantly, so I made a little spontaneous adaptation for the bath, and he thought it was the greatest thing on the planet. So far, all we have to do if the fussing starts is start to sing the song, and we're golden!

Also, Isaiah has grown resistant to veggies at times, but he asked for thirds the other night because of the Veggies Revolt episode and kept going, "Crunch. Healthy." I have to admit that I am less than thrilled about Isaiah watching much TV, but I have to admit Sesame Street has come through for us lately! Thanks, PBS!