Baff Time.

Punk.

Tonight was bath night. Let's look at a typical bath for these 21 month old yahoos:

6:15 - The bath is ready. Water temp is upper 90's. Squirty toys and gay rubber ducky drag queen are in the water. Towels are laid out. Conditions are perfect.

6:17 - We stand over the girls in their high chairs, Jen over Lily and I over Abby. "Do you want me to take Lily?" I ask, which is a throw-yourself-on-the-grenade offering; we both know Lily is the hard one. Jen says no, but thanks.

6:18 - We ask the girls if they want to take a bath. Lily screams, "No!", and begins to freak out. Jen now takes me up on my offer, and we swap kids.

6:20 - Abby goes easily. Lily turns to jelly for the walk up the stairs, whimpering and willing herself to slip through my hands. Once she sees the bath, though, she's on board. I strip her down, but she refuses to go in right away. First she has to throw all the bath toys in. There are roughly 20 bath toys, half of which I hide behind the toilet when she's not looking in order to speed things up.

6:22 - Lily's finally in the bath, as are every bath toy we own, making it near impossible to see the water. The water is soapy, though; I know that because Jen has already had the time to wash and rinse Abby's hair. This becomes relevant when Lily starts scooping water up with a cup and drinking it. "Hrmm," I say. I should stop this. I don't.

6:23 - After reading the shampoo bottle, I find that there seems to be no danger for "in case of ingestion".

6:25 - I'm not sure what prompted it, but the girls lean in and give each other a kiss. It's got to be one of the top 5 cutest things they do now. This kiss then gets repeated about 6 times.

6:27 - A splashing contest ensues. Tonight's was easily the most spirited I've ever been witness to; water was sloshing over the sides of the tub, and we were fairly wet by the end. I tried to hold a towel in front of my face to mitigate the wetness, but Lily kept pulling it down, saying, "Noooo!"

6:32 - Somewhere during all this, I managed to get Lily's head good and soapy. She immediately runs her hands through her hair, then rubs her eyes. It's like she can't possibly go any more directly to the most dangerous course of action possible. I wipe her eyes down.

6:34 - I lay Lily down to rinse her hair. She screams bloody murder. For some reason, she has hated being horizontal in the bath for a few months now. We suspect a possible ear infection, since she seems to grab at her ears when we do it. Because she's miserable, I keep it quick, meaning when I'm finished there's still 91% of the soap still in her hair. Jen and I pour water over her head and get it off.

6:35 - Jen has asked Abby multiple times if she wants to get out, but she's said, "No" every time; she's having too much fun with the splashing contest. At this point, Lily tries to serve Abby a cup full of bathwater; Abby chokes on it. She looks panicked. Jen asks, "Are you all done now?" and Abby turns, reaching towards her faster than I've ever seen.

6:37 - Lily still refuses to be done. I sneakily pull the plug on the tub. When she finally realizes that the water is going away, she starts moving the toys around, thinking she can find more water. Cute. Sad.

6:38 - We're out! And clean (mostly)! Then it's off to the post-bath, which can fill another post entirely.

Day two hundred and seventy nine.

ps. I failed to mention yesterday that Jen had the girls for most of the night by herself, and didn't really get any due credit in the post. I regret the omission. Jen is the cat's meow.

pps. Tonight's pictures feature ponytails! Generally, the girls' hair is a hair-scrunchy-non-grata sort of realm. Today, Abby was pretty much okay with it, and even Lily left them in for a few minutes.

Punk's ponytail.

Ne'er-do-well.

Gadabouts.