Tub Buddies

Life isn't always fair. This is a lesson that is first learned at home - especially if you have siblings. Then you experience it again and again throughout your life.

My boys have always shared a bedroom. I don't think there's anything wrong with having sibling bunk together - even if you have a home with enough bedrooms. Afterall, I share a bedroom too :). It was a bit of a pain when Jacob would scream his head off as a baby and wake James up. Then we had two screaming children in the wee hours. It would have been convenient to have them separated, but we didn't have the space back then.

Jessica has her own bedroom because she's a girl and the boy's room is full. She finds it SO unfair that she doesn't have anybody to share a room with. She often drags her blanket and pillow into the boys room and falls asleep on the floor.

The boys have shared the bathtub too - which they enjoyed for the most part. We always bathed Jessica in our bathtub - referred to as "the princess tub." But she eventually realized that it wasn't fair that she didn't have anybody to play with in the tub. She often tried to join the boys. My policy is that siblings can bath together when they are little regardless of gender. I've seen bathtub pictures of me with 3 of my siblings, so I would have been at least 10 years old. Jessica stirs up the waters though because there just isn't room for my three lanky children in one standard sized tub. Jon usually takes on the back breaking task of bathing Jessica & washing her hair. When he is out of town, I plead with the boys to wash her hair. "Please, go use my tub. I need your help. Please shampoo her hair." But on a regular day, we prefer to have the boys in their bathroom & Jessica in ours. She's sad about it, but there's less grief overall.

Jessica was thrilled when I added Jayson to her tub. She loves having a water buddy. It may work best for Jayson too, since he won't have to wait for the dishes to be done to get washed up.

And just because she's a curious gal, Jessica needed to try out the baby tub after Jayson got out. She also proceeded to dump half a bottle of that strawberry shampoo into the tub just to see it drizzle and bubble.