"Who wants a bathtub mint julep?"

Abbie’s new favorite play-area is the bathtub. I believe she discovered the joys of wandering over to the bathtub while chasing a cat (the fat one). It seems Charlie, the cat whom we lovingly refer to as “the fat one,” wants desperately to escape from Abbie’s fur-yanking hands when she starts chasing him. The bathtub serves as an excellent place to wait out of her reach until she loses interest and returns to looking for dog food. Plus, by hopping into the nearby bathtub instead of tearing all over the house, he can conserve the energy he needs to maintain his 18-pounds of cat-ness. You might think a cat, with it’s stereotypical hatred of water, would avoid a bathtub like George Lucas avoids compelling dialog. Charlie, though, enjoys a moderately damp bathtub, so much so that he will immediately follow a good moistening with lounging on heavily used furniture, such as the bed, so that we all may share in his localized humidity.

So Abbie followed Charlie to the bathtub a few times. While he sat and soaked, Abbie pounded on the outside of the tub, and discovered that it made a wonderful hollow sound, kind of like the sound produced by hitting her toy box with a TV remote battery, but even more metallic. Soon I found her next to the bathtub pounding away despite not having a cat cornered. Then, possibly be watching our rotund kitty move lithely about the room, she realized that round objects travel well on the bathroom’s hard floor. Soon she was tossing all sorts of round objects around the bathroom and watching them skitter about. Her fun ends when she accidentally tosses things into the bathtub, and has to wait until I retrieve them. So far in the bathtub, I’ve found Tupperware,* Weebles, Peek-a-Rounds, and Rockin’ Roundish Rhomboids. I have to get these items out of the bathtub because Abbie doesn’t climb yet and could never ever get into the bathtub by herself unless her mother does something to jinx the situation like say she can’t get into the tub by herself. Fortunately her mother has only jinxed the situation once. Once Abbie does start climbing into the bathtub, though, things could get dangerous. Not dangerous for Abbie, mind you, but dangerous for Charlie as the bathtub walls will no longer stop the fur-yanker.

* I’m serious about finding Tupperware in the bathtub. Where does a baby get Tupperware in the first place? The kitchen.