Bluey Completely Lied to Us About Bath Time

There should honestly be Olympic medals for parents who manage bath time and an appointment in the same evening.

Or at minimum a free coffee and emotional support coupon.

Because I remembered something at the absolute worst possible moment imaginable.

See, I had decided that giving all three kids baths back-to-back sounded exhausting and unnecessarily ambitious. So instead, I rotate them one at a time like I’m scheduling character rotations in a boss fight.

This particular evening was Alexis’s turn.

Now Alexis is three, which means convincing her to take a bath is basically the same process as trying to convince a cat to cooperate with literally anything. It’s less “gentle parenting” and more “trying to negotiate with Loki.”

Still, I ran the bath, added bubbles, and let her pick bath toys like I was negotiating a peace treaty at the Jedi Council.

Shockingly…

she got in willingly.

Which honestly should’ve been my first warning sign because peaceful bath time with children feels about as realistic as surviving a horror movie after saying:
“Let’s split up.”

Or like thinking nothing bad will happen five minutes before the words:
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Whoever designed our upstairs bathroom had clearly never met a child. This bathroom is tiny. Once the footstool is in there, the door stops functioning as a functioning door and becomes more of a decorative suggestion.

I’ve seen larger bathrooms in RVs.

At this point I’m pretty sure the Weasleys had more bathroom space at the Burrow.

So naturally my one-year-old Ellis wandered in through the open doorway like a tiny raccoon searching for trouble.

Or treasure.

Or opportunities for emotional damage.

She immediately started “helping” with the bathwater which mostly involved aggressively touching it while I repeated:
“Please stop leaning over the tub.”

At the same time, Alexis decided she absolutely needed MORE bath toys despite the fact there were already enough floating in there to start a small toy economy.

Seriously, there were enough rubber animals in that tub to qualify as Noah’s Ark.

So now I’m trying to make room for additional bath toys while also preventing Ellis from accidentally baptizing herself like some chaotic NPC I failed to escort properly.

And because chaos always arrives in groups, right behind her came my five-year-old Liam carrying Transformers.

Because apparently the bathroom also needed a Michael Bay action sequence.

So now the bathroom contained:

one child in the bath,
one toddler attempting water-related crimes,
and one five-year-old making explosion noises while Optimus Prime fought for his life on the footstool.

Meanwhile I’m standing there in a bathroom that smells aggressively like bubblegum soap and damp towels, feeling less like a mother and more like Professor McGonagall supervising students one bad decision away from losing house points.

But somehow…

against all odds…

I finished filling the tub and got Alexis settled into the bath.

Peace lasted approximately two minutes.

Because that’s when Alexis calmly announced:
“I have to poop.”

Of course you do.

Toddlers somehow always wait until they’re fully submerged before remembering this information. I don’t know if it’s biological or if they all attend secret meetings together like tiny Sith Lords plotting my downfall.

So I grabbed the little potty seat, got her situated, and THAT was the exact moment Ellis leaned too far forward and disappeared into the bathtub.

Not slipped.

Not stumbled.

The universe simply looked at the situation and decided:
“You know what? Let’s make this worse.”

Honestly the whole thing happened so fast it felt like one of those anime scenes where the camera suddenly cuts dramatically before chaos erupts.

For one horrifying second I just stared at her in complete shock while my brain fully shut down like C-3PO after bad news.

Thankfully she was perfectly fine.

Distressed.
Offended.
Immediately angry at me somehow.

But fine.

Honestly her reflexes were pretty impressive because she popped back up so fast her pajamas somehow skipped straight past “soaking wet” into “mildly inconvenient.”

Meanwhile Alexis is yelling from the potty and Liam is still completely unbothered because five-year-old boys could survive the apocalypse with a juice box and good vibes.

The bathroom could’ve caught fire and he still would’ve been like:
“Mom watch Optimus Prime punch Megatron.”

I quickly peeled Ellis out of her damp pajamas and ripped off the soaked diaper before launching it across the bathroom into the dirty laundry basket.

And honestly?

That may have been the greatest athletic achievement of my adult life.

Somewhere deep in the multiverse, Hawkeye probably nodded respectfully.

It was at THAT exact moment that I remembered:

I had an appointment.

In thirty minutes.

Now when I say I ran out of that bathroom, I mean I moved with the speed of a Marvel character hearing the word “multiverse.”

I found my husband peacefully sitting on the couch doing homework on his laptop completely unaware that upstairs sounded like the collapse of civilization.

Honestly the man was sitting there in peace while I looked like I’d just survived the Battle of Helm’s Deep.

And I just blurted out:

“You know that appointment I made yesterday? It’s in thirty minutes. Alexis is pooping. Ellis fell in the bathtub fully clothed. Liam’s playing Transformers on the footstool. Gotta go.”

Then I left him standing there holding all that information like Nick Fury assigning the world’s worst Avengers mission.

He slowly looked up from his laptop with the exact expression Jim from The Office gives the camera before getting up and heading toward the bathroom.

The last thing I saw before leaving was my husband walking down the hallway like a man responding to a natural disaster DLC.

Honestly marriage is just tagging each other into boss battles at random intervals.

And while I sat in a completely normal adult meeting thirty minutes later pretending my life wasn’t one missing snack away from total collapse, part of me was still wondering what happened after I left.

Did bath time somehow get calmer?

Or did the chaos escalate into a full season finale situation?

Honestly knowing my children, there’s at least a 40% chance Optimus Prime ended up in the bathtub too.

Things That Help Me Survive Bath Time (Mostly)

In case anyone was wondering what equipment I use while trying to prevent tiny humans from recreating the Titanic in my upstairs bathroom, here are a few things currently helping me survive motherhood with at least some remaining sanity.

Witch, Please