Exhausting Bath Time

I just finished giving Becca a bath so I had it fresh in my mind.  Bathing has been an interesting part of taking care of Becca.  I was thinking back to when we didn’t have a bath chair and wondering how we did it!  Here is a picture from last May when we got the bath chair:

 
I love this picture!  Becca still had a little bit of baby fat …love the double chin!  And well, she loves her little sister.

The bath chair, along with a new and long detachable shower head has made bathing Becca a lot easier.  But she has gotten a lot longer and getting her out of the bath (though from a slightly higher position) is a little hard. It’s like picking up a really long, 38 lb, slippery noodle.  
Here’s our current bath routine:
-10 minute pep talk: Does she really need a bath?  She doesn’t stink that bad…well, I guess she kind of does.  Hmmmm, when was her last bath?  Oh it’s been a week, it’s really time.  Ok.
-Collect all possible needed items set up in the hallway for dressing (the bathroom is tiny and it’s hard to get her up and down in the bathroom so we dress her in the hall).  Put bath chair in bathtub.
-Make sure Becca’s fingernails are clipped before giving her a bath or else she scratches herself a ton (draws blood on occasion).
-Undress Becca and plop her on the bath chair.  Waiting to take her diaper off until she’s laying on the bath chair saves me from having to clean up a pee trail (learned the hard way :)). 
- Drape washcloth over g-tube so Becca can’t yank at it.
-Working quickly as possible bath the cute Becca.
-Stand up very slowly so as not to throw back out (leaning down for that long really stiffens my back)
-This is the tricky step.  While holding edge of towel in mouth lean down in a sort of squat position, lift Becca and pull her on to lap while sitting down on the toilet.  If it goes smoothly, Becca will then be sitting on the towel and can easily be wrapped up all cozy like.
-Lay Becca in the hall and diaper/dress her
Becca is only five.  I have a feeling that we’re going to look back when Becca is 10 or 20 (yikes!) and say, man, we had no idea how easy we had it.  But that’s the beauty of taking things one day at a time.  I know how to bathe Becca now and that’s all that matters.  When the day comes that it gets a little too hard, we’ll figure something out.