In a few years he's going to kill me for putting this on the blog.

I haven't posted in a little while because there's some rather heavy stuff going on in our family, resulting in TH being out of town for the last 10 days (and counting) and me doing the "single mom" thing until he gets back. But I had to make time to sit down and record this little gem just in case I need a really good embarassing story later.

Scene: bedtime tonight. Normally when TH is here we each take one kid - he usually handles J's bath/PJ's/brush teeth and I bathe/dress/nurse the baby. While he's out of town, however, this is a bit impossible, so since this is my off week I've been bathing Jr. during the day (I wish I could do this on work weeks too but alas...I'm at work) and bathing J at night. Seeing as how he's almost four, I've been allowing J to bathe "by himself" while I get the baby changed and dressed -- i.e. I fill the tub and do the bubbles, he gets in and splashes around (and presumably cleans himself) while I'm in the baby's room across the hall where I can see him, I come back in, double check that he's clean and help him get out and get dressed. Then they both get a story in J's room, he goes to bed, and I commence the nightly nursing/rocking/supposedly laying Jr. down "sleepy but awake" routine.


So tonight I'm in Jr.'s room getting him ready for bed and I can hear J splashing happily away in the tub. A couple of weeks ago I bought him these foam rubber letters/numbers that stick to the wall and sides of the tub:

Disclaimer: This is not really me and J. I don't usually have hair and makeup done for bathtime.

J has been obsessed with taking a bath every night just so he can play with these things. After a few minutes the splashing stopped and I could hear J saying things like "Get off of there" and making this annoying whining sound that he does when he's frustrated with a game or something. "What's the problem?" I called out. "Um....nothing!" he said. Sensing that there was a little more than "nothing" going on, I went into the bathroom to investigate.


As it turns out, a certain almost-4-year-old had discovered that the 6's and 9's of his letter/number set have little holes in the center. And this certain someone ascertained that the little hole was about the same size as a certain...body part that only little boys have. And that certain body part was shoved through the hole in the center of the 9 (or maybe it was a 6) and he couldn't get it back out, because as J learned the hard way, the little hole in the 9 is actually a bit smaller than the certain body part. So I come in to find him standing up in the tub with a bright orange 9 (or maybe a 6) hanging off of his...body part. After laughing my ass off, we proceeded to have one of those parenting scenes that you really never could come up with in your wildest imagination. That thing was really stuck. I tried um, tugging, with no success. Then I thought maybe I could rip the number in half, and discovered that foam-rubber is much tougher than it looks. I briefly considered trying to cut it off--the 9, not the...body part--but even with my surgery skills I'm a bit squeamish thinking about putting scissors near that area. Maybe if TH had been there he'd have had a better idea since, you know, he also has one of those...body parts. Eventually it occurred to me that we were in the bathroom with the soap and lotion...

Let's just say we got it unstuck. Can you imagine if we hadn't, and I'd had to go to the ER with both kids and THAT problem?? It would have made someone's night, that's for sure.