Time to Soak Your Head

Ever feel like soaking your head? The nice thing about being two-and-a-half years old is you can actually soak yours any time, anywhere—and nobody holds it against you. Unless, of course, you’re my daughter Belle and you soak your hair in the toilet during a family reunion. "I was hot, Daddy."

(That's not Belle in the picture, but you get the drift.) After the dunk, she looked dazed and drenched. I don’t blame her; after all, when you’re two, how would you know that shredding toilet paper and tossing it into the basin like confetti would cause it to commingle with your hair during a self-induced swirlee?

“Commingle,” Belle repeats to me.

“That’s right: Commingle,” I say. I’m all about turning challenges into learning opportunities. Like, I could help her invest in this promising invention:

Don't laugh--think of all the potential: Weddings, funerals, Olympic opening ceremonies, overheated children!

I learned something over Easter, too: Never let a relative be the Easter Bunny for your kids unless they’re putting them to bed at their house. After eating chocolate bunnies and jelly beans, Belle ate snow. My brother asked, “On a scale of 'one' to 'head-in-toilet,' how bad do you consider eating snow?”

"Least it's not yellow," I said. The toilet was urine-free, too, during Belle's head dunk, so cleaning her hair was pretty easy. However, it was more difficult when, the next day, Belle decided to open the container of whipped cream and wear it as a rally cap.

It’s enough to make a parent stress out. Belle reads me like a book. “Daddy has a red sticker on his nose!” she says.

“Actually, that’s called a zit,” I tell her. “But thanks for pointing it out.”

She giggles. “Daddy has ZIP on his face!” She agrees with all the women I asked out in high school. When you’re a parent, you must flush your ego--or your kids will do it for you.

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Copyright Christopher Hollenback, 2007. All rights reserved. I'm introverted, after all.