Bathtime checklist

A parental version of What’s On My iPod or some such thing like that. In descending order of importance, most to least:

• • kiddie towel with the cute hood thingy that keeps ’em cozy;
• • pennywhistle (from the Emerald Isle itself, via the Mother Outlaw; I’m abysmal at it but practice makes perfect, and she hasn’t begged me to stop yet);
• • most recent New Yorker (on a big reading night: I get the film review in, Shouts and Murmurs, Talk of the Town, etc.); alternately, The Nation, if I haven’t read Katha Pollitt yet, or last week’s NYT Sunday Magazine;
• • leftovers from the kid’s dinner that she didn’t eat, so as to aid & abet the ongoing Sympathy Pregnancy Weight Gain;
• • camera, for come-what-may, + ongoing “bathtime multitasking” photo essay; and
• • notebook & pen, as pictured above (as alternative to reading matter).

Already in the tub:

• • mesh thingamabobber that’s suction-cupped to the wall & contains whatever random things she’s playing with at the moment, which currently features a 20-year old 2 oz. Nalgene backpacking bottle, the unusable part off a friend’s espresso maker (handed down from her girls), and those bath crayons that are so much fun I have a hard time sharing them with her;
• • washcloth, which I forget to use on her like 85% of the time (I am the dad here, after all, must uphold the slack relationship to bodily cleanliness that was set in concrete as of age of five, the Dawn of the Tomboy; noticable foodstuffs are hastily wiped off at end of bath, particularly if mum is likely to see her before the lights go out);
• • baby shampoo/body cleaner, which it rarely occurs to me to use, except in extreme situations (why? indelible inks rub off after a week or two; water gets most everything else. What? What?).

Expressly NOT included, never will be:

• • phone.