Splish! Splash!

There’s something about water. We are instinctively hard-wired to respond to its presence and properties. As much as we try to avoid weather water with umbrellas and overhangs and jackets with hoods, there are moments when we all break out and embrace the deluge. What tips the balance? How do we go from pulling our coats closer and avoiding the wet one moment to dancing in the rain the next? There’s some primal threshold that, once crossed, allows us the freedom and abandon to get our clothes and hair and skin soaking wet--and revel in the drenching. My kids seem more prone than most to loving water in all its forms. Keilana was a bona fide water baby, swimming across the spa at eight months with her diapered hiney bobbing at the surface. Connor didn’t like the pool, too cold, but would stay in a steamy bath until he was as red as a lobster. Addie would cry to get out the door in stormy weather, so she could stand under the spout from the rain gutters in her diaper. We have to distract Scarlett every time we go past the Downtown Plaza fountain unless we have something to use as a towel in the van. Vera, the sassy little mouse star of Marjolein Barstin’s Vera in the Washtub, splashes in puddles, gets covered in ink, and generally makes messes that she’ll have to clean up by soaking in some kind of bath. I guess she ends up “squeaky” clean.


http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Vera-in-the-Washtub/Marjolein-Bastin/e/9780812060881


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjolein_Bastin