grillsidestories

“Bath time Nariah!”
This can either garner a response of cheers or moans, you never can tell these days. Toya and I each have our own different takes on bath time experiences, each of us with our own versions of both ends of the spectrum coming from “lets hurry up and get cleaned up” to “let’s have fun in the tub”. As your children get older and their imagination soars its up to us to stay on our toes and build upon that imagination. Last night Nariah was in a “so-so” mood about bath time so I suggested, “How about we go fishing in the tub?”
“Yeah, that sounds fun!”

Little did I know how much work that meant for me. We have this Elmo fishing set which is magnetic and comes with a cloth like octopus, crab, and starfish. (Why they don’t have an actual “fish” in this “fishing” set is beyond me).  Catching the octopus and starfish were a piece of cake. It was after those that it seemed Nariah had a slight case of ostraconophobia, pronounced “fear*of*CRABS”. Boy you’d thought this child would jump out the tub when I tossed the small crab around. After calming her down and finding out she’s scared because the crab can “pinch” her, we talked about how you can grab it from behind, throw it in the pot, and eat ’em later. That seemed to work, kinda. So we needed something else. This is where imaginative kids tax your brain. I actually let Nariah tell me what she saw in the “ocean” that she wanted to catch next.  This started out with a tuna fish, a shark, a dolphin, a whale, and finally a octopus (which she didn’t like so a shark had to come eat the octopus).

I personally do not  know how a tuna fish swims or sounds, but Nariah made sure to tell me I was wrong in my attempts. The shark was pretty easy to mimic with my hands, and after she caught that with the rod she said we had to throw it back, not only because it doesn’t fit in her bucket, but because we can’t eat them. Still wondering who told her that bit of info. The dolphin she wanted to catch just so she could play with it. This turned into a SeaWorld type event with Nariah being the trainer and my hand trying to do all the dolphin tricks. The blue whale was the most interesting and taxing. I didn’t realize sounding like the blue whale from “Finding Nemo” for about 5 minutes would tear up your vocal chords, and I should’ve realized splashing around and making waves like a blue whale would leave water everywhere in the bathroom including on myself. But it was definitely entertaining so see Nariah pulling and straining on the rod trying to “tire” out the whale, and telling it to “come on!!! come on!!!“. I think I made her a little upset when the whale, (my hand), let go of her hook and she had to hook the whale again. Now the daddy version of the octopus was different from the magnetic toy version. Even though it only had 5 arms, it was still maneuvering around that tub and sneaking nips at Nariah’s toes and knees, all to the glee of a jumping and giggling child. She wasn’t even trying to catch it, moreso just beat it down with the hook. So to save her, a shark came and ate the octopus and all was well again in the Goldman Sea.

Look at the time, I guess we have to introduce soap to this bathtub before Mommy wonders what happened to us up here. As I actually bathe her I start to think for future bath times do I try to come up with ideas or do I let Nariah’s creative start the flow? It looks like it might be more fun if I let it come from her.