Before and After...

Kathleen ate her dinner with a lot of enthusiasm tonight. It wasn't my best performance as a cook (honestly, you can hardly call it cooking), and it wasn't the most nutritionally balanced meal, either. But Kathleen didn't seem to mind. She started off with some carrots, which she largely gnawed on, rather than ate. Next she ate some pita bread and sun-dried tomato hummus. (I'd just made the hummus and Kathleen apparently appreciated the home-made effort.) After that she ate an astonishing amount of spiral pasta with a spicy marinara sauce, some sliced apple, and a few bites of Mama's spinach salad. I find it interesting that she picked around the chopped spinach I'd tried to hide in her pasta, but pleaded for the spinach from my plate. Go figure!

Anyway, after that enormous meal, Kathleen looked like this:

Obviously, we were in pretty desperate need of a bath. Fortunately, bathtime is one of Kathleen's favorite times of day. She slides around in the bathwater like a little fish! She'll recline, she'll lie on her tummy, she'll turn every which way -- splashing the whole time. She has a little boat with some fish and a fishing pole and some little cups, and those toys amuse her every evening. Kathleen particularly likes to fill the cups from the faucet and watch the water drain out the holes in the bottom. She understands that a bath is for getting clean, though, and if you give her a little bit of soap in the palm of her hand, she'll rub her hands together to get clean! Fortunately, Mama's got a washcloth and a slightly more developed sense of what might need some scrubbing, so by the end of the bath, Kathleen looks a little more like this:

That's much better!