Word: Saponaceous

saponaceous

[ sap-uh-ney-shuh s ]

adjective

resembling soap; soapy.

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              Mary had just sat down and was about to really settle in when she heard it. The sound that sets all parents into high alert: their child screaming and crying. Mary rushed to find the source. She found it coming from the bathroom. The bathroom where her son, Henry, should have been taking a bath. Instead, something had set the child into a frenzy of panicked screams.

               She burst into the room and stopped dead. She was not quite sure what to make of the scene. She knew she should be mad and her boy. But it was also one of the funniest things she had seen in her time as a mother. She had to fight the urge to laugh at her son’s distress.

               The entire bathroom floor was filled with bubbles, and more were pouring out of the bathtub at a steady rate. Henry was huddled in the far corner, doing everything he could to avoid the slow advancement of the white bubbly soap. He sat there, curled into a ball and screaming his tiny head off like he was being attacked by wild animals.

               Mary waded through the bubbled and turned the water off. She made her way through the soap, parting the suds like Moses through the Red Sea. At least, that’s what she hoped she looked like to Henry. She scooped the wet child into her arms and said soothing words to comfort him as he clung to her.

               When he finally stopped crying and sniffling, she set him down on the counter. Now that his terror had passed, he looked ashamed and scared of the wrath of Mom.

               “Now then, can you tell me what happened?” Mary asked. Henry tucked his head into his shoulders and mumbled something. “What was that? You need to use your big boy voice.

               “I…I wanted bubbles.” Henry said. “So I did what you do and I got the bubble stuff out and I poured it in and then there were a lot of bubbles.”

               “How much did you pour in?”

               He did not answer. He simply pointed at the tub. Mary waded through the soap until she got there and then waved her hands around, dispersing the bubbles until she found what she was looking for. On the small ledge of the tub was the bubble bath mix. When she had started the bath for Henry, it was almost full. Now it was almost empty.

               “You poured the entire bottle it?”

               “I wanted lots of bubbles.” Henry said. “So I put a lot in.”

               Mary looked around. “Well, you did get a lot of bubbles. But next time when you want them, call me or Daddy and we’ll put them in for you, okay?”

               Henry nodded.

               “What did you learn from this?”

               “That Mommy and Daddy know how to do the bubbles best?”

               Mary stifled a chuckle. “And what else?”

               Henry thought about it for a little while. “That a little bit of bubble stuff can make a lot of bubbles.”

               That was about as close as she was going to get with a six-year-old, so she went with it.

               “Now you know what we have to do now right?”

               Henry shook his head.

               “We have to clean up all these bubbles.”

               Henry looked around and the soapy floor and his eyes went wide. Mary picked her son up and set him on the floor. Soon enough, the much nicer sound of a laughing child filled the air.

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Hope everyone is staying safe and disease free.  I know it sucks, but it's better than the alternative, right?