slip slidin' away

Little kids, by nature, are freaked out by showers. Baths are cool. You get to sit in the water, play with tubby toys, and generally control the action. But a shower is a deluge of rushing water, coming down from above - way out of your reach or control. I think it's for those reasons that Kenny has, up to now, been freaked the hell out by showers. I even used to employ the shower head over the tub as a way to get him to wrap up an extra long bath time session. All I had to do was reach for the shower head, and Mr. Man went scrambling over the side of the tub in a furious attempt to escape.

This changed about a week or two ago, when for some odd reason, we started discussing showers vs. baths at dinner. Kenny got a little smirk on his face and I innocently offered up, "Do you want to take a shower with Daddy tonight instead of a bath?" He said, to my surprise, "Yes."

The shower went fairly well, except for Kenny screaming like a banshee when the idea of standing under the water was presented to him, instead of sitting on the shower seat, just outside of the water's spray range. So instead of him taking a real shower, I stood under the water (or "rain" as Kenny called it) and splashed him silly.

Interestingly enough, the next night, Kenny wanted to take another shower. And the night after that, and so on. With each successive shower, he grew slightly more open to the idea of standing under the "rain" and letting it wash away the soap/shampoo, instead of Daddy taking handfuls of the stuff and dumping it on his head.

Which brings us to last night. The shower went fine. Kenny even stood under the water (briefly) with only a minimal amount of screaming bloody murder. It was the getting out of the shower that took a turn for the, "Thank God your mother isn't home right now."

After turning the water off, I grabbed my towel and dried off. Then I went and grabbed Kenny's towel and dried him off. Then I stepped out of the shower and instructed him to be very careful as he stepped out, because as I must have told him about 5421 times now, that shower floor is slippery. What's that? You see where this is going? Yeah, I should have too.

I stepped out, and then as I turned back to watch him, everything transitioned to slow motion. Kenny took an awkward step towards the door, his foot slipped, his body went forward, and he intriguingly used his head to bounce off of the raised doorframe. With a lovely, "THUNK" the boy whacked his noggin' off the frame and began to wail as if, well, he was standing under the shower.

Digging deep into my parenting skill toolkit, I raised him up and checked for damage. Blood? No. Skull fractures? None that I could see. Huge purple welt that would raise his mother's eyebrows and heart rate? Check.

"You're okay, Buddy," I reassured him. "You just took a header on the slippery shower floor."

Kenny gave me a dubious stare and continued to sniffle and let the tears flow.

I had him look into my eyes and I gave him my most casual, confident smile.

"When we fall down, Buddy, what do we do?"

"We [sniffle] get back [sniffle] up again [snort]."

"Right. And what would Grandpa say?"

He looked at me quizzically.

"You get back up again, because YOU'RE A HOCKEY PLAYER!"

"I'm [sniffle] a hockey player [grin]."

"Damn right. Now let's never speak of this in front of your mother, lest she send you on an indefinite stint on the IR."