That moment When you are giving your baby a bath and you actually see him pee in the water is a life defining moment. It clarifies who you are as a person. It paints a picture of how you think and what you are really like at your most basic level. The way you are when no one else sees.
This may not be true if it is a friend’s baby that you are watching, but if it is your own you are forced to confront your honest self and see yourself for who you really are. Also, if you are taking this opportunity to examine yourself deeper, it shows you how you have grown and changed through the different stages of your life.
For some people, this kind of character analysis can come earlier in life and be discovered through other means. When I was young, I had a sock philosophy that was very much the same kind of thing.
At first, I refused to wear matching socks, and it was a stand against the tendency of western man to ignore the important things that matter and, instead, throw all of their energy and attention into meaningless causes that don’t do much more than make them look good. Sock matching was a waste of time that could have been better spent on more important things. Your feet could be perfectly warm and blister free in one blue sock and one orange-with-green-starbursts sock. The rest is vanity.
Then I grew some, in years and maturity, and my philosophy took a different turn. I began to see it more as an integrity issue. Socks were small and relatively insignificant in comparison to other things (would you rather have socks or pants?) and on top of that, they are rarely seen - but even if others don’t see or you don't think it matters much, God sees and if you aren’t right on the inside you can never be right anywhere else. We may be able to keep our little secrets and cover our flaws, so men don’t see, but God sees who we really are, and His is the only opinion that matters. If you are going to do something, do it right even if no one else sees. I wore matching socks.
Baby pee is kind of the same… kind of…
Here you are, with your first beautiful, little, new born baby and you are lowering him into the infant tub. You’ve tested the water and it is just the right temp. You have your all-natural baby shampoo and your baby washcloth all ready and the sweet little terry-cloth baby bathrobe hanging nearby for when tubby time is over. You slowly put him into the water and the second his hand touches the warm water (you know what happens, we’ve all played this prank) a pale yellow geyser springs up, contaminating the water and sprinkling your baby's head.
“Eeeww!” you say, immediately withdrawing him from the water. You clean his head with wipes, set him aside all wrapped up, dump the water and start all over again.
Fast forward ten years.
Now you sit on a little green stool about the right size for an elf with your fourth child in the tub. He is old enough to be in the big tub but still young enough to not care where he pees or to know that it would be gross to drink the water. You can’t find a washcloth but one of your husband’s clean socks is handy and that is pretty much the same material,right? The tub toys are interesting to say the least. You have just set the baby in the tub but he won’t sit down (apparently, one- year-olds believe that after you learn to stand up, sitting down by anyone else’s desire is one of the seven deadly sins or something) and as he stands there the warm water kicks in and does it’s thing. The golden stream pours forth into the water and you sit there, helpless. The sound track in your head begins:
“Well that’s gross. He is going to put that in his mouth. Really gross. I just filled the tub, he hasn’t even sat down yet! I don’t have time for this and he will scream if I take him out. Still really gross but really, the odds are high that he pees in the tub every time he takes a bath, I just don’t see it happen, so i’m not grossed out by it.”
Out loud you say “Don’t drink the water!” as the baby raises a cupful to his mouth. He is sitting now and has no idea what you could mean by these words. He refills his cup that you have dumped out and tries again. You again dump it with the same command and the cycle is repeated a few more times. At this point you hear a fight break out downstairs and you move to the doorway to forcefully instill peace in your other children. When you turn back, the baby has already swallowed half of the tub water and is working on ingesting the cup.
I have learned that I can’t sweat the small stuff. I will do the very best I can, pay attention to the important stuff and learn to let go of the rest. By the time the baby is four, he will understand the command “don’t drink the water” because I will have said it at least 3.5 million times and I believe he will turn out to be a well-adjusted adult that will know better than peeing in the tub and also know a few other really important things.
Interestingly enough, the sock thing ended in a similar way. I wash all our socks and match them up as best as I can (with a basket of singles on the side) and then you can wear matching socks until you run out - then you wear whatever fits best until I can do laundry again.
And who knows? My perspectives and philosophies may change yet again. . . I still have many things to learn and many ways to grow.
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