Cleaning House

Daniel was taking a bath this evening, and he suddenly disappeared down the stairs, dripping wet, and proceeded to drag a huge wooden medieval castle from the playroom up the stairs and into the bathroom.

I'm pretty stream-of-consciousness, so I wasn't particularly disturbed by this incongruous moment. I told him it wasn't time to play with his castle, and he said something about it needing to be cleaned, and the river flowed on without my worrying about stemming the tide. He plays with his knights at an even more awkward time in his daily routine, so I didn't think it was too odd that he would play with his castle from the bathtub.

However, when Amy checked on him soon afterward, I suddenly got what the task at hand had turned out to be. Amy was suddenly emitting shrieks of disbelief and bewilderment, and yelping that now the water was dirty and he had to get out and rinse off. Apparently the reason he was dragging his castle into the bathroom was because, like himself, the castle also required cleaning, and he had already moved the top portion of it - some kind of tower - into the bath for a proper ablution. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that a wooden toy castle would be joining him in the tub, but of course nothing ever surprises me, after the fact, with Daniel.

(July 13, 2011)