Apple Juice and Soap

Shower night at our house is chore, as I’m sure it is in your home. Especially, if it is Connor’s night. Most of the time trying to get him into the shower mimics the scene in Jurassic Park when they are trying to wrangle the Velociraptor into the cage. Take out the jungle and replace cage with shower and your get the idea. We have tried so many ideas to try and persuade him to shower and not make a fuss about it. There was candy after you’re done method. He could play Nintendo DS for ten minutes after he was done. He could watch Phineas and Ferb (and giving a monkey a shower da, da, da, da). None of these would work for very long. Then Mandy came up with the brilliant idea of getting themed soaps for him to use. We have had Spiderman, the aforementioned Phineas and Ferb, but the latest has been the best. She found Monster University soap. The bottles are in the shape of Mike and Sully. They are pretty cute (wait, can a guy say cute and still keep his man card?) and Connor loves them. Alex is getting to the age where he is above such soap but he is a good sport and plays the part so Connor can have them. We had our first experience with the soap the other night and it was not his best work but it still made me laugh. The Mike Wazowski (thank you Google for the spelling) is a sour apple fragrance and that is the one he chose to use first. After he gets done singing the Wouldn’t Have Nothing song that plays at the end of the Monster Movie, he decides to wash his body.

Let me back up here a minute. Connor does some of his best work in the shower. Just the other day I walked in on him singing What Does the Fox Say. If it’s Wednesday he mimics the Geico Hump Day commercial. He has talked to me about his battle plans for the next Lego vs. Jake the Pirate battle (yo ho matey’s away). He is hilarious in the shower. So yes everyone sings in the shower. If you say you don’t then you’re a liar or a liar.

Back to the Connorism. So when he is done with his shower and I am helping him towel off, I ask him how he liked his new soap. He proceeds to lift his arm, smell his armpit (it’s always the armpit) and asks me, “Do you want to smell my pit? It smells like apple juice!” Now I love my sons more than anything in this world. I would do anything for them, to protect them but I draw a very thick line when I am asked to smell an armpit, even if it is freshly cleaned.

As a side note here I want to mention how proud I am of Connor. At our school we have the Seven Character Foundation Stones; Respect, Responsibility, Self-Control, Perseverance, Cooperation, Integrity and Citizenship. Each month our assemblies are associated with one of the foundations stones. One student from each class is chosen that best represented that trait for the month. Connor was chosen for the month of April for Perseverance. Mandy and I are very of proud of him for the progress that he has made this year in his school and character work. They also give out You Rock cards for good behavior. You can earn unlimited cards and then every month at the assemblies they randomly draw a few names out of the hopper for the month and Alex’s name was drawn. It was a very cool experience to have both of our boys win awards in the same month.