"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory."

Despite many failed attempts it finally seems that we have crossed the bath time hurdle with Opeie, it's been a long and frustrating process but we're now at the point (like this morning) where he is actually crying to get in the bath rather than out and seems more than happy to have his hair washed. Fingers crossed this is how things will stay. Thanks to Nuby he has more than enough things to keep him Occupied in the tub and as i write this Mrs M has just started coughing and spluttering because she yawned and Opeie shot her in the mouth with Squid the Squirter so thanks to Nuby also for my boy becoming quite the marksman.

This may have been a frustrating time but its only setting us up for the inevitable potty training saga which I'm sure is just around the corner (should be fun). Its great to know that he's in to a good routine now and enjoys being in the bath and brushing his teeth (even more so now with his new Spider-man toothbrush, thanks Nanny Roo and Grandad). He's really growing up fast and although Mrs M wanted her little baby to stay that way forever I'm really glad that he's now starting to understand things a bit more and is a lot more independent.

Congratulations Opeie on your latest victory me and mommy are very proud of you.

"Bath twice a day to be really clean, once a day to be passably clean, once a week to avoid being a public menace."

Its becoming increasingly more difficult to bath Opeie as the weeks go by, he really dislikes it at the moment and the mere mention of the word 'bath' makes him freak out and start crying. He hasn't always been like this, he used to love getting in with myself or mrs M and would get so excited that it would take days to dry the floor around the bath from the crazy splashing.

I know that young children go through phases but im always wondering what triggers it. Nothing bad has ever happened in the bath and we don't do anything differently i guess he just decided one day that 'that bath thing just isn't for him'!

Needless to say we still soldier on with new toys and clever ploy's to get him interested in washing again. I definitely don't want to be the daddy with the stinky child. We were sent a package from Nuby last week and inside were two bath toys so we were excited to see if they could do the trick. Mrs M got in the bath and i took the toys out of the packaging casually waving them in front of Opeie's face before putting them in the tub.

Opeie walked into the bathroom to investigate but it was obvious that getting him into the bath was going to be an issue. Mrs M started playing with them and to be fair i think she forgot that we were trying to get him in the bath as she was getting far to carried away squirting every thing with 'squid the squirter'. i was sitting with Opeie on my lap and we managed to get wet from the backsplash off the tiles, Mrs M was having a whale of a time. We decided to take the plunge and get Opeie undressed and in the bath....

As you can see it didn't go down to well, he was a very upset little boy. Even mommy squirting herself in the face wasn't doing it for him. We did have a breakthrough though when we introduced Seth's Imaginext penguin submarine into the equation. Seems that Opeie really enjoyed Mommy blasting him it with the squirter. Seth's going to love this when he sees it and will be wanting all his batman toys in the bath to use as targets.

The second toy (The Tub Time Turtle) also didn't start off to well, it didn't entice Opeie into the bath but as soon as Mrs M was using it to rain on cookie monster then he was a happy boy for a short period of time. We did have some plain cups like this bit this design was much more fun and it kept Opeie's attention off that dreaded water he was sitting in briefly.

Well we got him in the bath that was the main thing, we failed to wash his hair though and bath time last all of about 5 minutes before the tears started again and he desperately started reaching for me to get him out. So the toys were a winner but sadly the water surrounding them ruined all the fun. So were going to have to try some other things as well as these again. When we popped into boots yesterday i spotted some great foam bath letters so they may be next, also i read something on a friends Facebook page that gave me an idea to try soon so stay posted and ill give that a try this week.