My pretend alone time

It's 6:30 on Friday morning, and both Veronica and Rex are in the bathroom with me.  All three of us are naked. I am showering, and the rule is that no kids are allowed in the actual shower with me unless it's a weekend.  I don't know where that rule came from other than it will maximize the days I can shower alone, and anyway it's my right as a parent to make up arbitrary rules.  It's what we do. The other rule is that Veronica may not touch Rex.  He's laying happily on a stack of blankets on the bathroom floor, staring at his left hand, which he recently discovered, but since he can't use it yet to defend himself against his sister we have the rule. The rule is important since I am on one side of the shower glass and my kids are on the other, and without me it's frontier justice out there.  

I am surprised that Veronica hasn't tried to touch Rex yet.  She absolutely loves him and wants to touch him day and night all over his body - kiss him, lick him, contort him, generally mess with him.  To her, he's a living doll, a cooing little boy toy.  But then Rex starts to scream for some reason, so I ask Veronica to find some toys for him.  I feel a little guilty asking her to be my errand girl, but she loves to help.  I am learning that big sisters can be quite helpful, and Veronica is pretty sophisticated.  She scampers, totally nude, out of the room and comes back with a potato masher, her cup of milk, and one of Rex's baby toys.  Something for everyone.

I stay in the shower as long as I can until it becomes clear I need to get out.  There is whining and fussing on the other side of the glass, which only bothers me because it's interrupted my pretend alone time.  I leave the water running, because Rex likes it and it usually buys me an extra five minutes to moisturize.  (Totally worth the water bill if you ask me.)  As I step out of the shower, my daughter looks at me and loudly says, "You have big boobitty breasts.  I call them boobitty because they flop around. Flop, flop, FLOP!"  Despite myself, I laugh out loud. She starts to laugh too and skips out of the room, shouting the whole way.  I can't wait until she has kids one day, and then we will see who is laughing.

I look down at Rex, and he's no longer fussing.  He's trying to put the potato masher into his mouth with his left hand.