Eat or Be Eaten

It’s bath time! One of the most enjoyable moments of the day for parents of young children. It washes the day off of everyone. You get to relish your bundle o’ joy while they are contained by four compact, little walls. You can sit on the toilet and look- there they are! Not going anywhere or getting into anything. Yay!

My husband is running the bath water and calls for Lola, our little girl. She comes running in doing the toddler shuffle. She is ready to de-robe, de-diaper, and jump on in! She’s excited. It was after Easter and our just turned 2 year old had gotten some super fun bath fizzies shaped like a duck. She lined up her fizzy duck with her rubber ducks. (Awe! She got my OCD! How cute!) Jones, my husband, helps her in the tub and tells her to sit down before we add the fizzy.

The fizzy goes in.

That is pretty much when all hell broke loose! The duck starts fizzing. The water changes color and begins to resemble a witch’s cauldron. The water actually looked like it was boiling. The baby starts screaming her head off. I think she thought she was being cooked! Well of course she did! Who created these damn things? I had visions of Elmer Fudd cooking Bugs Bunny in his kettle. That’s what Lola looked like. Except a lot less calm.

Pandemonium.

She is screeching like a banshee and just wants it to stop. I think my husband froze with panic. I was trying to get to our daughter when the unthinkable happened. That child looked at the half fizzed out duck and while screaming, picked it up…. and stuck it in her MOUTH!!!! That’s right, she put the damned duck in her mouth! She tried to eat the duck! Now she is literally foaming at the mouth, still screaming her head off. My still unmoving husband starts to scream too, then I did. It seemed like forever before I could get to her and grab the fizzy out of her mouth.

What on earth would possess a child to do something like this?! It came down to the most basic of animalistic instincts for survival; eat or be eaten. That’s it! That is all I could come up with! There’s always the dog that eats their own poop theory (GAG!), but that is generally so they don’t get in trouble. No, this was definitely more of a survival technique. Still, you would think that we as humans have evolved enough that this wouldn’t continue to be an innate trait. That’s when it hit me. All the theories and jokes about my husband’s “ancestry” must be true.

Jones is Lithuanian. Not like “Oh look what I found on Ancestry.com” centuries ago Lithuanian. His grandparents actually came over on the boat. However, that’s not the ancestry I am talking about. I am talking about the ancestry we like to call Sasquatch. Yep he’s definitely got some Yeti tendencies and physiognomies going on. Let’s just start with the hair. There’s a shit ton of hair. Everywhere! The hair on his back is so thick that Lola (now 4 years old) just noticed he has tattoos there a couple days ago. I’m not kidding. Side note: if your back is that hairy and you aren’t going to keep it shaved, why waste money on tattoos back there? Then, there are his arms. They are the longest arms I have ever seen. He is about 6’3, but I swear his arm span must be almost 7 foot. You know that famous picture? This one?

Well that actually isn’t the famous picture. That’s my husband on the beach in Costa Rica. We have several pictures like this. And this picture…

That’s Cousin Larry at the last Labor Day cookout.

His “imitation” howls are impeccable and I swear he can hear things no one else can hear. Certain frequencies and pitches cause his head to tilt in a “master’s whistling for me” kinda way. I won’t go into detail about his fascination with Chewbacca, but I will tell you that Chewy’s snorts and whines are very soothing to him. So this ongoing Neanderthal joke is no longer as funny as it used to be. I have obviously mated with an ape-like creature and now my precious baby daughter not only has his long arms, she has his animalistic inclinations. How am I going to explain to the other soccer parents that she can’t help that the sound of the ref’s whistle causes her to charge? Should I start shaving her legs and arms before she starts kindergarten?

Back to the bathtub.

Jones grabbed Lola and wrapped her in a towel. All she could do was cry, shake and say “Dat fizzy duck was cookin’ me!” over and over and over again. It was the most pitiful thing! I called poison control. I didn’t know if it was the same thing as bath salts that cause people to act like zombies. The last thing I needed was a baby zombie Sasquatch on the loose. I mean, two is hard enough! After dispatch stopped laughing and making me repeat my story (they were obviously cuing other people in to pick up the line for that evening’s entertainment) they told me she was fine and to keep an eye on her. As far as baths went after that, it was about two weeks before she took a bath without a meltdown, six months before we could add a few bubbles, and no one is ever allowed to bring any kind of bath fizzy back into this house. Ever. She also had quite a few stern words for that mean ol’ Easter Bunny too!