Hot Shower

I wish children had an innate self-preservation instinct. It would make my life easier if I didn’t have to worry about children falling off furniture, grabbing things off the stove, and shoving everything in their mouths. If they could at least learn lessons quickly that would help. Even vermin know that if eating something makes you vomit, don’t eat it again. With children, spitting something up just gives them a second attempt.

Abbie’s latest effort to poke the eyes of Serious Injury involves playing with the bathroom faucet. She loves toddling up to the sink, climbing atop her step stool, and playing in the basin with the water running. Sometimes she splashes in the water. Sometimes she scoops up residual soap bubbles and deposits them in her mouth, which you wouldn’t think would taste good, but judging from the way she repeatedly scoops, she thinks they taste better than cake and pizza. Sometimes she just turns the faucet on and off, and therein resides the problem.

Our bathroom faucet is the type with two knobs, one on the left for hot water, and one on the right for cold. Abbie loves twisting these knobs, but since she’s apparently afflicted with the same left-handedness I endure, she almost always reaches out with her left hand to turn on the hot water. Full blast. And if she notices the cold is on, she’ll shut that off. This is especially perilous since we live in multi-unit housing where I have no control over the hot water temperature. I doubt anyone has much control over its temperature because, judging from the way it feels flowing from the tap, our hot water comes straight from a nuclear cooling tower. When we owned our house, I kept the water heater set low, partially for safety reasons so no one could inadvertently burn themselves, but mostly because I’m too cheap to pay for really hot water.

Usually we keep her safe and non-scalded by keeping the bathroom door closed, but we can’t always keep her out of the bathroom. Tooth brushings are notoriously dangerous times. Abbie has to have the water running while brushing her teeth, otherwise she’ll turn the water on herself. I’ve learned to compensate for this by turning the cold water on when we start; that way even if she turns the hot water on full blast, the temperature will only reach extraordinarily uncomfortable. I need to watch her closely, though, because one twist of the cold water knob, and she’ll melt her toothbrush bristles under the running water.

Yesterday she was in the bathroom again, this time with me as I used the, um, bathroom. I saw her climb up to the sink, so I turned on the cold water. She played in the sink for a minute, and I let her. Then she grabbed one of the 32-ounce cups she plays with during baths, and I let her. Then she filled the cup with water, dumped it in the tub, and I let her. Then she turned off the cold water, and I missed it. Then she refilled the cup with scalding hot water, hoisted the cup above her head to dump it on herself, and I was about to let her. Then I noticed the steam rising from the cup, possibly as the plastic reached boiling and evaporated, and knocked the cup from her hands. A little water splashed on her, and she screamed. I don’t if she was screaming because hot water hit her, I just freaked out, or the fact that water landed on her clothes making them wet and quickly cold.

I kicked her out of the bathroom, gave her a hug, changed her shirt, and sent her on her way. She was happy again, and I was glad that she didn’t have any burn marks that would hurt my chances for Father of the Year. Then she fell while trying to climb up to the CD rack.