Sort of Paying Attention

Up until a few months ago I used to use just one bath sponge for both of the boys. But then over the summer Kenzo's friend Max came for a sleepover and all three boys had their bath time before bed and it turned out Max was pretty awesome at washing his own body with his bath sponge. So the very next day I went out and got Kenzo and Osamu their own bath sponges so they could start learning how to bathe themselves.

Tonight in the bath I was giving praise where praise was due, while also giving advice where it was due. I lather up the boys' bath sponges and hand them over, supervising their body scrubbing until it's time for me to intervene and get them fully washed, rinsed, and into the tub. 

Kenzo is getting better at washing and even drying his back. He often forgets his neck and shoulders. Osamu starts to scrub and then gets distracted by the steamy mirror and draws pictures of me looking like an ogre and then points and laughs, saying, "That is you, papa!" I dread the day he stops being four years old. 

Tonight there was very little bickering and arguing in the bath. They love to splash, and sometimes it leads to laughs and sometimes it leads to tears. They also love their bath toys. Tonight we did Paw Patrol toys, which includes a waterproof bath storybook.

The book is written in English, and the boys know the story well. It's based on the episode of the TV show where the Paw Patrol helps some baby turtles get across a road and into the ocean. The boys like to tell the story to each other in Japanese in the style of their kindergarten teachers, who read them curriculum-based Japanese storybooks every day. They make up versions that include lots of fart and poop jokes.

Tonight, however, Osamu was busy blowing bubbles in the bath water and Kenzo was as curious as ever about the text in the storybook. He was looking for something. He asked me, "Where is Rocky's name?" He was looking for where the character Rocky's name was written in the text of story.

I was soaking in the 39 °C bath water, sort of drifting off and sort of paying attention. 

Kenzo gave me his bath book and I scanned the text of the page but Rocky's name was nowhere to be found. I flipped through a few pages but before I could find a spot where Rocky's name appeared. Kenzo grabbed the book back from me and pointed to a word and asked me if that said Rocky.

I looked. It was not Rocky. However, it was a name that started with R. I told Kenzo he was close and to try and sound it out. He's really into that these days. He loves discovering the words on his own.

The second letter of the name is a tricky letter, but Kenzo went through the motions of figuring it out. I watched it happen. In the bathtub. He has learned that the letter Y has four main sounds, and he tried them all out and almost gave up until he decided to just move on to the next letters. And he did it. He figured out the right Y sound contextually and then likely realized that this is a Paw Patrol book and the only other characters whose names start with R are Rubble and Ryder and then he deduced it was indeed Ryder, his favorite character.

I promised the boys if they did bath time and pajama time fast then we would read one of our long stories, and they did great. Kenzo chose a Winnie the Pooh story. The stories from that book take close to 10 minutes, and the boys love them, almost as much as I love reading them. 

Tonight was a story about how Christopher Robin told everyone winter is coming and Pooh and all the animals think winter is a person and then mistake a snowman for that person. Kenzo was particularly interested in the text of the story tonight, even though I focus on the illustrations. He asked me a couple of times, "Where is Christopher Robin's name?" He wants to see and and understand the writing.

I think maybe my anxiety medicine is working. Turns out it's Zoloft. I've heard of that. The problem is it makes me more sleepy than usual at night when I sit here at the dining table doing my reading and writing. When I get sleepy, even without medication, I fall in hard. The other night I was sitting here reading and I guess I fell asleep and fell over because the next thing I knew I had banged my left eyebrow on the humidifier. It still hurts.