I’m sure you know ‘em poor shaggy little kids. Their faces are stained – you can easily tell the meals they had during the last few days. Probably you fear their hands as I did most time of my life. Warm, sticky, having touched things you never even would glance at. Immediately they would’ve been glued to your clothes, leaving an imprint never to be removed again without an ounce of bleech. Well, I, myself didn’t like drooling babys, too. their shirts were wet, their little scarf no obstacle for the spreading liquid.
Then I got pregnant and finally gave birth to Johanna, my second child. As I was a fulltime employee when my eldest was a toddler, I was going to make all new experiences and was very excited.
Really – there was no problem in keeping Johanna’s little angelface clean. She always looked proper, her clothes were not dirty at all, even when she started crawling and later walking. Babywipes I imagined the very best invention of the world these days. And of course Johanna wanted to wash her little cute babyfingers whenever she touched something slimy, greasy or not-mommy-conform. So my conviction grew that all those chocolate-stained faces I met on the streets, playgrounds, busses etc. (and their hands I still avoided like pestilence) belonged to poor, unattended creatures whose parents should pay a bit more attention to. Of course all of you whose kids maybe HAVE some trend to share out their meals with all the other parts of their body instead of keeping food in their little mouths will get only more disgusted when I add, that I used to offer babywipes to other mommys. Or tissues. Because I didn’t like snot covering the half of a child’s face either. Just to push their attention a bit, you know.
Well, no problem there, so far. Then I got pregnant again and Emily began to enrich our lifes. Unbelievable, but my paranoia grew into spheres unforeseen. Ok, nobody needed to desinfect their hands before touching my cute little one. But I was the bravest guard in cases of sticky kids-fingers. “Oh noooo, she won’t like thaaat…”. When Emily finally began to crawl I actually cleaned the floor twice a day because I didn’t want her little fingers to tangle up in someone’s loose hair (or worse). OF COURSE I still consumed a large amount of babywipes. And it was really LARGE, because Emily had this nasty habit. The one of putting everything into her little mouth. And I mean everything.
Emily grew older, learned to sit, to walk, to open all our closets and developed the motto of her young life: ON MY OWN! Suddenly my whole universe shifted. Whereas it’s easy to keep a gentle child clean it’s impossible to cope with a wild one. Especially if that special girl has a deep inner conviction that the world is wide open for a toddler to make experiments no adult would dare to dream of (or at least would lead to really, really bad dreams).
cacao-stained
To make it short: I gave up. From now to then I suddenly understood all these parents with stained clothes, glued to sticky fingers and looking at faces reflecting one menue at least. You cannot impress progress with babywipes. Some kids are destined to be great developers. To taste cat litter, to bite the dog’s ear, to eat their pudding all alone and to pee on your carpet because they want to use their potty – ON THEIR OWN.
I still got babywipes in my bag, but I really don’t need much of them anymore. I just fill some water into the tub in the evening and deal with all these layers of dirt using a scraper (or rather washcloth).
Tell you what: I’m accepted in company of other mommys again. Totally healed.
By the way: Johanna is no longer a hygienic freak. Since Emily’s birth she got to have more freedom, i.e. time ON HER OWN and meanwhile I sometimes don’t know anymore which ones bathwater is browner.
Now, THAT I'll still clean up 
