Splish Splash ...

There's nothing much sweeter than a baby in the bathtub! They don't mind getting clean when so much fun is going on. This is our grandson Jason Cody with his favorite rubber ducky.

I remember, as a little girl, taking baths with one sister or another, usually the one just older than me. Doubling up in the tub had several advantages ...

First, you're relatively safe in the water, (as long as you haven't provoked your sister). Second, it means somebody can wash your back for you. I was never good at using a long handled brush with a washrag wrapped around it.

Perhaps most importantly, doubling up meant saving hot water for Daddy's bath. That was one treat our hard-working father had to look forward to every evening.

Before his bath, though, we welcomed him home with hugs all around and something to drink -- Mom's wonderful iced tea in the summer and a hot cup of tea or coffee in winter.

Next, we'd take his work boots off and get him the mail. After relaxing a bit, he was ready to go soak in a very full tub of water. Dad may have had to live with a houseful of women (six of us), but he was treated like a king when he walked in the door.

As for our baths, we usually ran a little less than half a tub of water, knowing the level would rise and end up above our bellies when we got in and sat down. There was plenty to splash around and some left over when we got out. (For little brother, who would be last in the tub due to being a boy, and the only one at that). Hey, at a very young age, I already knew the main difference between boys and girls: Boys always got dirtier than we did!

Ah, those were the days. The simple, old-fashioned nuclear family days when you shared a bedroom, a bathtub, hand-me-down clothing, a family dinner table and the same parents your siblings had.

Things have changed a lot in the past 50 years ... most kids today have their own bedrooms and baths, a closet full of clothes they don't have to share, their own TV & cell phone, a game system, a computer, a car at 16 ... and on and on it goes.

Not that technology and a room of your own is bad -- I had to wait until I was in high school to have a room of my own -- and then it was only because all four of my older sisters had moved away to college by then.

But I think children today miss out on some things, too. The built-in bedroom buddy you inherit in a big family, the comfort of knowing you're never alone in a big house, the sharing of familiar heritage and family stories, and ... the bathtub.

Splish Splash, we DID take our baths -- mostly on Saturday nights!