Dateline Boston — A couple of weeks ago I was given the task to bathe the baby. Easy enough. Put the baby bathtub in the regular bathtub, fill with water, soap up baby, empty bathtub. I put the baby tub upstairs in the bathroom, and was immediately reprimanded by Toddler. “No, it doesn’t go in there. Mommy does it in the kitchen sink!” My boy likes routine. Fine. After prompting Toddler to ask nicely to wash the baby in the kitchen sink, I loaded the dishwasher with the dirty dishes that had been in the sink, went upstairs, got the tub, and put it in the kitchen sink.
I washed the baby in the tub in the sink while Toddler watched. Afterwards, I flipped the tub upside down to drain it, and brought Baby upstairs to dry him, fluff his downy hair, slather him with lotion, and dress him. I kissed his little face a few times, then went back downstairs to the kitchen.
Something was wrong. It was like a horror movie, except instead of blood, there was water. Everywhere. It was creeping towards me on the floor, in slow motion. I dashed to the kitchen sink and saw what had happened. When I flipped the bathtub over, it had moved the faucet away from the sink and on the counter, next to the window. At the same time, the faucet had turned on. The water had been slowly running all over the counter the whole time I had been upstairs cooing at Baby.
I put Baby in his chair, where he immediately started wailing. Toddler came into the kitchen, and I bellowed, “Stay out! Stay out!” Without hesitation, he backed away. He knew something serious was going on. I ran to the laundry basket of clean towels and grabbed a bunch. I put them on the floor, and took as many kitchen towels as I could to sop up the water on the counter. I unplugged both coffee makers and the toaster, and put them on the dry counter next to the stove. Everything went on that counter. Dish drainer, bottles, utensil canisters, and whatever else had been sitting in water.
Here Is What Happened
I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel as the towels soaked up the water and things started to dry. The baby had stopped crying, so I took a moment to go into the living room and calmly explain to Toddler what had happened. He listened but didn’t really get it, and went back to playing with his toys.
After everything appeared dry, I started opening drawers. Sure enough, each time I did, water shot out. I took out the silverware organizer and mopped up the drawer with paper towels. I took out all of the food storage containers from their deep drawer, and dried the bottom of that. Took awhile.
I scooped up Baby with one hand, a bag of soaking wet towels with the other, and went to the basement to put the towels in the washer. I sat Baby in a stroller so I could have my hands free. In between the stroller and the washing machine, there were three puddles of water on the basement floor. I wanted to cry. Instead, I mopped up what I could with wet towels, wringing them out in the basement sink and starting all over again. Nothing like wringing a wet, dirty towel with one’s bare hands!
Somehow, I got all of the water from the floor and was able to put everything in the wash. Baby watched me with little interest.
Back upstairs, I put the kitchen back together. I thought of how lucky we were. Thank goodness we hadn’t decided to go for a walk. Thank goodness it wasn’t time to pick up Big Sister from the bus stop. Thank goodness I noticed the problem after a few minutes instead of a longer amount of time. I was lucky to catch it when I did.
The towels got cleaned and dried, and by the time Mom arrived home, we were all listening to music, having a dance party in the kitchen. Looking at our idyllic scene, you would never know that just a few short hours prior, the kitchen looked like a scene from Noah’s Ark. Next time, I’m going to ignore Toddler and bathe the baby in the bathtub, where the faucet is stable.
Ms. Vaillancourt may be contacted at snobbyblog@gmail.com
