Our boys only get a bath twice a week and usually I bath Gabe and he’s in and out in five minutes then Barry baths Toby and he gets to have a play while I put Gabe in bed. Yesterday however, the boys were overdue their bath by a couple of days for various reasons including Gabe being ill (again!), Barry getting stuck in traffic on the way home from work for three and a half hours on Tuesday and just a bit of laziness on my part.

Barry and I have both been ill as well with some sort of flu virus thing so yesterday he came home from work at lunch time because I was really struggling with both boys on my own. We decided to make bedtime for ourselves and give Toby and Gabe a bath in the afternoon and thought that maybe it would be a good time to try their first bath together.

Now, Toby has refused to sit down in the bath almost 10 months now. We had a couple of months where he screamed his way through every bath and then he settled down and started to enjoy it again but still refuses to sit down. Up until now Gabe has been bathed lying back on a bath support… so there was always a chance this wasn’t going to go well!

We put the aquapod in the bath (it’s like a bathmat with a built in seat that we used for Toby), and then when I put Gabe in… he cried. And cried. And cried.

We got Toby in in the hope that he could distract his little brother and he did a little bit by showing him some of the bath toys. But Toby still wouldn’t sit down and Gabe still wasn’t happy. Even our old faithful the bubble machine didn’t help.

In the end I gave Gabe a quick wash and got him out and then left Toby with his dad to get his hair washed and have a play. Not the most successful first bath together with our boys but hopefully it won’t be like that forever! Maybe I need to try and get Gabe used to sitting first and when he’s happy with that then get Toby in too. And you never know, maybe Toby will even copy his brother and sit down in the bath again.