Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve read a number of blog posts that refer to showering.
- Kelly from Dances With Chaos blogged about her 18-month-old being booted out of her gym’s childcare. This unjust suspension took away Kelly’s only chance of showering.
- Larry from Christian in the Rough mentioned that many of his best ideas come to him in the shower.
- Clay from Educlaytion blogged while showering. It’s a video of him talking in the shower. Think Ferris Bueller.
In the synchronicity that is life, I too have been thinking of showering, mostly because it’s something I’ve been unable to do without being interrupted. For six years.
If you have young children, showering is a luxury.
When my twins were newborns, showering required logistical preparation that would impress most army generals. There were issues of timing, clothing, equipment, and alertness. I lugged two bouncy chairs into the bathroom, disrobed, and showered in under 3 minutes. Vivian and William generally screamed throughout their daily sauna.
Now that my kids are in Grade 1, showering is supposed to be easier, but it’s not.
Here’s what happened this past weekend.
I’m showering. Vivian is sending my mom a message on Facebook. William is writing a story to prove that Vivian’s not the only kid who writes in this house. My husband is out.
Interruption 1
I’ve just wet my hair when the bathroom door opens.
“Mom?” Vivian asks, “How do I send the message to Grandma?”
“Are you bleeding?” I ask. I had previously instructed my kids to open the bathroom door only if they have an open wound.
“No,” Vivian answers. “But there’s no ‘send’ button. Is ‘reply’ the same thing?”
“Yes,” I shout.
Vivian leaves.
“Shut the door!”
Interruption 2
I have a nice lather going now. I’m finding zen. The door opens.
“Mom?” William asks. “How do you spell guess?”
“Are you bleeding?”
“No,” he answers, “but I don’t know how to spell it.”
“G-U-E-S-S,” I say. “And shut the door!”
Interruption 3
The conditioner is in. The loofah is lathered.
The door opens.
“Mom?” Vivian asks. “When will Grandma answer me back?”
“Shut the door!”
And this is why I dream of a doorknob with a lock.
*
But that will just ensure them pounding until the door breaks…. 😉
Ugh. Hadn’t thought of that!
I can completely relate! These interruptions are daily occurrences at my house as well, but you can read about my worse showering experience here~ http://www.ourlifewithfivekids.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html.
Happy showering!
They called 911? Oh my goodness. You win for worst shower experience. May I never top that.
LOL~just read the comment by Scrumpy Daddy. I do have a lock, but don’t use it because we have had to fix the door and the door knob from them “pounding until the door breaks”. Not worth it!
Uh oh. Warning heeded!
This is an awesomely true post, or so I’ve heard (I don’t have kids yet). One of my friends had her first baby 7 weeks ago, and she often talks about a great day being one in which she gets to shower. Thanks for the laughs, as always! 🙂
Thanks, Kim. Your friend is right: having a newborn changes your definition of a great day.
I can’t think of any off the top of my head (I’m sure the Mrs. has stories). Interruption are expected in our 1 bathroom nest. No lock either… Actually the door doesn’t even shut properly (wood expanding from hot weather & building shifts from earthquakes – So Cal).
I have gotten into the habit of proclaiming my bathroom intentions so the little one has a chance to run in before me (as you know – kids have the bladders of 90 yr olds).
I love the line, “Are you bleeding?” Classic! Great read (you has me laughing @ your pain – sorry). 🙂
Glad you got a laugh.
It’s odd that–once we have kids–we start doing things that we once thought were socially unacceptable, like announcing bathroom attentions. I do that too. I also often refer to myself in third person (e.g. Mommy’s going to shower). It annoys even me.
::snort::
I have been known to say things like “mommy has to go potty” and then wince.
I feel for you, having two breaking & entering six year olds. My son’s only one, but he can almost reach the door knob. In a few months (who am I kidding. In a few WEEKS) he’ll be able to reach it and walk right on in. I’m sooo not excited.
The door know stage. We changed a lot of our door knobs when our twins were that age to the harder-to-open variety. But they figured them out soon enough. Good luck with that. 😉
Hah! I think I might have a peaceful shower once the kids move away to college. For now, the bathroom doubles as our livingroom when I’m rub-a-dub-dubing. I get that it’s nice and steamy while the shower is running, but isn’t there a better place to congregate, at least one with better seating?
I think a lot of things are going to change when the kids go to college. Maybe then I’ll be able to finish a conversation, whether it’s on the phone with my mom or in person with my husband. But of course, then we’ll miss the interruptions.
Don’t count on it. My college-aged granddaughter just HAS to use the shower RIGHT NOW (even while I’m in it).
When this was an issue in my past life, I remember the first house where the bathroom had no locks. Ugh. Then we moved and I had locks on every bathroom. There’s no other way in my life!
I may have to consider moving to find better locks. I get that. 😉
My kids never interrupt when I’m in the shower; however, my cat can open the bathroom door and frequently pops in to give me an odd look. I don’t mind the shower interruptions so much, but it’s awkward when I’m going to the bathroom and I can’t get the door closed again before one of the kids or one of their friends walks by.
I love cats. The I-do-what-I-please pet.
And there’s nothing like exposing yourself to company. The question is, did they come back?
Ha! I live in a house that is slated to be torn down, so I tried not to get bothered when my husband failed to put the doorknobs on after the doors were painted. That was two freaking years ago. I’ve gotten used to my son bursting in in mid-shower, or even mid-pee. He has effectively reduced my showers to a scant 4 minutes (I’ve timed them to protest to my husband. It hasn’t worked). The only brightside is when guests ask to use the bathroom, and I get to enjoy the terrified look upon their face when I announce that we are a doorknob-free house. You’d think I’d just proclaimed our commitment to nudity…
Minor point: Why is your house slated to be torn down?
When my friend bought a fixer-upper, none of the bedrooms or bathrooms had doors at all. That takes open concept to a new level.
And I love that you timed yourself in the shower in the name of gathering evidence. That is something I would do.
I really hate to say this (or admit it), but it’s still challenging. Even when they’re teenagers.
(Sheepishly dragging my sorry butt to the tub as we speak. OMG. I guess I have to clean it first, if there’s time, before returning the prom tux so I’m not charged a late fee, before the trip to Home Depot, before the school pickup… see???)
Don’t tell me that! It ruins the illusion. Sigh. I think I already knew that at some level, though.
Probably my worst showers were the ones when I laid my firstborn down for a nap, knowing I had exactly 30 minutes, no more, to get showered, hair dried, etc. I grabbed a baby monitor and towel, and raced to the bathroom. By the time the monitor was on, water hot enough, and clothes removed, five precious minutes were gone. If I dared to just stand there and actually try to relax — it was the only moment I’d have that entire day — I could pretty much guarantee that she’d wake up and start screaming. Then I’d have to race to finish up and throw clothes on, forget about drying hair, listening to her rage on the monitor the entire time.
Nowadays, I am ashamed to confess that I get myself to exercise by bribing myself with 2 hours of kid-free time, shower included, at the gym. I can’t believe that showering in a locker room is actually a reward.
So, let me follow your logic and apply it to myself. If I wish to work out and shower in peace, I should have another baby.
Let me get right on that. 😉
Oh no no no no! Don’t get on that! (or him. ahem.)
If you wish to work out and shower in peace, you must join a gym that offers free childcare and showers. No price is too high, trust me.
I took a shower with my 3 1/2 year old son out of desperation a couple of weeks ago. He had his swimming lesson, and I desperately needed a shower, and I just decided to get both of us clean in one shot.
He complimented me on my “fur” and, pointing to my breasts, said, “I like these.”
Won’t be doing that again.
Joy, you have me laughing. Hard.
During Spring Break, I changed with V and W in a family change room. We were getting into our swim suits. Suffice it to say that William said some “interesting” things.
That is pretty much the only way I get a shower as well. I found it an excellent incentive to work out – the shower waiting at the end of it.
I will rarely attempt any shower unless it is under 5 minutes if my husband isn’t home. Often times, if I do go to the gym (on a weekend) and he is at home, I still don’t get a shower – there are just too many things going on.
My gym is my sanity for this very reason. In Texas, you really need that daily shower.
Clearly, I need to join a gym.
Or move to Texas.
I hate getting out of the shower to the sound of a crying baby. it happens less these days, because he is sleeping/napping better. But it always stressed me out.
Yes, and you’re more aware than me right now of that stress right now with a wee one. Glad he’s sleeping better!
I hadn’t realized till now how lucky I am! I hop in the shower before my little one’s up, or–if I opt to walk the dog before Li’l D rises instead–I “trade” Daddy for shower time after the babe’s roused and fed.
I do recall the administrative difficulties of bathroom time after my son got old enough that he was conscious for huge blocks of time. Think he permit me to let him down? Nope! That was fun. Occasionally the problem crops up now, but it’s definitely not the routine issue it was then.
I think I’m going to take this moment to be grateful for these luxuries! ^^
Ode to peaceful showers.
An Aussie acquaintance–who teaches and runs a swimming lesson business–recommends showering with your newborn as a way to help them get used to water in eyes, etc.
Nice one, mate.
I love Vivian. That is all.
And Vivian would be all over you. She loves wild women. (Seriously).
I haven’t had a quiet shower with my children in the house in years. They also have toilet-dar. They could be completely occupied, but as soon as I get up to go to the restroom, they’re on me like I’m just returned from a year in Siberia. What’s up with that?
you’re kids are great. may they never meet my children or we’d be doomed.
Toilet-dar. Love that.
Thanks for making me laugh. Siberia’s sounding pretty nice, isn’t it?
And if our kids meet, I’ll bring the wine. Promise.
holy good gawd….I need to do a blog post about showering, because my twins never interrupt me and never have. I ignore I guess. (snicker)
but those interruptions were too funny, “will Grandma ever answer me back” Classic!!!!!
You’re so lucky! And you should do a post about what it’s like to shower in peace. For many of us, it’d be like reading fiction.
my friend who has 2 boys & one bathroom asks for a spa gift card from her husband every chance she gets just so she can go there and take a long hot relaxing shower! she says it’s worth every penny…
Long hot shower and a massage = heaven.
During a rare “at home shower” my 4 year old son barged into the bathroom (we have three toilets, only one of them shares a room with a shower) to pee.
And he wanted me to get out so he could have privacy.
What the…?
I’m convinced if I hadn’t joined a gym, I would be locked in an asylum by now. They day I started getting in exercise (which actually gave me more energy) and the hot shower, I started enjoying motherhood.
I did try (initially) to shower when my son was a baby. His psychic powers sensed the moment I stepped into the hot spray (getting my long hair soaked), and would immediately wake up. Screaming. It didn’t matter if he’d been napping for 5 minutes or 45 minutes, he knew.
My daughter is usually more cooperative and my son is “old” enough, if I’m desperate, I can grab a 5 minute one if I turn on the TV.
Forget about leg shaving time.
Thanks for the link Leanne! I was dying about the spelling interruptions. I can see my son doing the same thing in the future.
I am laughing at your son asking you to leave the shower. Hilarious. Unless you’re the one in the shower.
Shaving legs? Is that what else I’m supposed to do in the shower? 😛
My worst shower experience was when my eight month old crawled in (Daddy wasn’t watching her) and stood up leaning on the shower door. I couldn’t get out, because I would have smacked her with the door and knocked her over. So I stood there dripping wet for about 20 minutes until my husband got curious about where the baby was.
That is so funny. Okay, not funny for you. Trapped by your own spawn. Good thing your hot water didn’t run out.
I’m very thankful that my kids always go looking for my wife first. But I have had the power go out on me a couple of times in the shower. There’s something very unnerving about showering and trying to towel off in total darkness.
Thanks for the mention, Leanne!
A wife. Some days I could use one of those.
How bizarre am I to admit I like showering in the dark? Maybe all those lengthy power outages growing up on a farm had something to do with it.
“Are you bleeding?” Why is that so difficult to understand? If there’s blood, yes, you are; if there isn’t, no, you aren’t.
At some point I’m going to have to write about showering with the kids. For the sake of expediency (and hot water) there are times when it has been one adult and four kids. Especially interesting at the height of Hellcat’s bagina/wiener identification phase.
Hellcat will no doubt know her way around an anatomy textbook. And yes, you have to write that post.
Mine 3 yo daughter will stand outside the door and keep up a well timed “papa…papa…papa…” until I respond. Locks dont help at all. 🙂
Oh no! Maybe if I shower with earplugs. Maybe if I shower at the neighbour’s house. Sigh.
My kids know how to unlock the bathroom. It is one of those flat locks that just need a screw driver. There are screwdrivers all over the house. My daughter actually hides them so she can get in whatever room she wants. I think the sound of the shower to kids is to the sound of the can opener for a cat.
Hilarious. Horribly hilarious. So, instead of Easter Egg hunts, you search for tools.
Worst shower was at a middle school camp. It was an open room with multiple shower heads circled together. Not curtain. Up to ten naked middle school boys and hairy adult leaders showering at the same time. That was the worst shower ever!
Okay. You win. Hands down.
Okay, Rob, you jut described my best shower experience. Kind of. Not with boys. Aw crap, let me explain. At summer camp, all of us girls kind of squished in one skinny line together, sharing shampoo and razors – trying really hard not to touch each other. No adults and not very much hot water. But I swear, those people are my closest friends today.
In fact, I am tapping out this note from Tampa in the home of one of those friends. Nakedness brings people together.
Now, as far as Leanne goes, all I can say is Monkey stopped coming in our bathroom as soon as he learned some stuff in 5th grade Health class. I am unsure what that stuff is (he would not elaborate), but he no longer comes in. I’m guessing Vivian is gonna be all up in your naked junk for life. After all, you have the good make-up.
When I was little, I used to just walk into the bathroom and sit on the floor and talk to my mom while she showered or took a bath.
Then I would run out of things to talk about, so I’d get quiet. After awhile she’d stick her head out from behind the curtain and say, “Oh…you’re still here.” It all makes sense now.
I love that memory. How sweet is that. I also love how your mom outlasted you talking, but you outlasted her shower time.
The most memorable shower I’ve ever had was when I went camping, and we made a “solar shower” out of an old milk carton complete with golf tees. When you needed water, you pulled out the golf tees. When you were finished you plugged them back in. The problem was that there wasn’t enough water in one gallon for hair washing, and there you are standing under a tree with a plastic curtain around you and shampoo in your hair and eyes, with no more water….
Wow. I sit here, amazed. That really is quite ingenious. Except for the not enough water part.
When I lived in Thailand, I sometimes stayed at cottages on the beach with highly modern outdoor bathrooms. There is something amazing about looking up and seeing nature all around you. Providing there’s enough water, of course.
Wow! You lived in Thailand? What did you do there?
Our kids ignore the don’t-interrupt-me-unless-someone-is-bleeding rule, too. It’s OK. You’ll be clean, someday, eventually.
Thanks, Todd. That’s reassuring. Kind of.
Ha! Why do the children never bother their fathers, I wonder?
I often take baths and end up with “helpers” who want to wash my hair, point at my boobies and giggle (What IS that? Biologically instinctive to little boys?) or dump their bath toys in for me to play with.
My husband is no better and since I am phobic about locking the door (what if I passed out and no one could get to me? What if a psycho killer came prowling and I could not leap from the shower, naked and slick with water to defend my family?) I have given up believing that I will EVER shower alone again.
Sigh.
I love your locked door phobia. And the image of you defending your family. Hilarious.
Thankfully, my kids mostly leave me alone when I’m showering now (of course, they’re usually not up at 5:30 a.m.!). I do remember the days of dragging the little baby seat into the bathroom with the kid strapped into it, and the speedwashing that followed!
I used to use the “Are you bleeding?” thing for when the kids would run in and out of the house all summer (back when they didn’t have computers and actually played outside…sigh…). The rule was that you stayed outside unless you were bleeding or had to go to the bathroom. If you came in for any other reason, you couldn’t go back out!
I too have some of my best ideas in the shower!
Fun post, Leanne!
Wendy
I suppose I could get up at 5:30 for some peace.
No thanks.
But I do envy your showers!
Sorry to tell all you parents of young children:
the situation will NOT improve as your kids age – unless you take action.
Which I did not.
At almost 12 and 14, my kids REFUSE to let me see them in any state of undress anymore. They have their doors shut and bathroom locked;
it’s all. about. privacy.
However, if I say I need to take a shower (our master bathroom is open to the bedroom where my kids for some reason LOVE to spend all their time), they moan and groan and don’t leave.
I end up having to get naked first, and then because they are embarrassed for ME, they leave.
Still. It’s an effort. Even now. And I am slightly worried the brief sight of my bare butt might send them to therapy forever.
How many years until they leave for college?
Julie – I am laughing at this. Sometimes the only real persuasive power we have over teenagers is embarrassing them. You’re brilliant.
We have the weasels both trained and old enough to guarantee I can shower while they are “getting ready for school” (read: playing on their DS whie schoolbags and lunches lay around untouched….) I still have yet to outdo my sister-in-law who has had a full bath every morning since taking possession of her three boys, leaving them to fend for themsleves in the breakfast arena.
Our bathroom door also lacks a lock, but the one in the basement locks. Sometimes I claim that one as mine, since it’s so cold down there you don’t get nearly as much foot traffic….
I think showering in a basement is like going for a polar bear swim. It may seem like a good idea at the time.
Maybe I need to try your sister-in-law’s Survival of the Fittest strategy. Somehow, though, I think my kids would come to the bathroom actually bleeding.
When I first met D, he had no shower curtain. He did, however, have a mop. So after each shower, we had to mop the bathroom. He claimed this was a good thing because it meant the bathroom floor would be clean. To his credit, that floor was spotless, so he had a point. An inconvenient point, but a point nonetheless.
One of the first gifts I gave him was a shower curtain… for purely unselfish reasons, you understand.
Now that’s romance!
I get that, though. When I started dating DH, I was so used to living cheaply (due to my previous teaching job paying me peanuts), I didn’t have a toaster – I just used the broiler. I had so many burns on my arm (I also didn’t have pot holders) that he bought me a toaster.
My worst shower ever was June 7, 2010. I had to take my two-week-old in the shower with me when she decided that was going to be the time she was going to latch properly.
LMAO. Seriously? I love how you know the date. An anniversary is coming up, isn’t it?
I wrote about it, so it wasn’t too hard to find the date. I might celebrate that anniversary by taking a long, hot bath. AFTER the kids have been given some Benadryl or something else that will put them to sleep.
Oh, that is hilarious. I almost died laughing when Vivian left the room and you had to shout “Shut the door!”
It was like a scene from my own house.
I usually get a shower about 3-4 times per week, because, you know . . . I don’t want my kids to think that mommy has a life or anything…
Laughing at how you have no life. I can’t even remember having a life.
You have to have a great sense of timing as a parent, right? And a lot of patience!
And some alcohol or a good therapy fund.
Where is your damn TWEET button? Do not tell me you do not have one? This must be spread across the Tweetosphere. Or whatever it’s called. The place all the twits hang out.
This is great. Brings back memories. Showerus Interruptus is the definition of showering when your kids are little. My memories: babies in carriers, babies in those door-jumper-thingies, getting 5 minutes before the kid howls into the monitor from the nap I just put her down for, blessing Barney every morning for being the shower-time-babysitter, showering before dinner, showering after the gym at 5:30 a.m., not showering . . .
Now that my kids are older it can still vary because of my schedule being trashed from lack of sleep: kid sick in the night, teenager not getting home when they should, college kid not answering phone until 2 in the morning, 10 year old waking up for no reason and deciding to make me part of it, blah blah.
My favorite showers are the ones I stand outside the door and listen to as my littlest dude belts Michael Bublé at the top of his lungs while he rub-a-dubs.