kai's first bath at home

somewhere between kai's 1st and 2nd week, we did give him his first bath at home. you can't really give babies a proper bath until their umbilical stump falls off which usually takes a couple of weeks. but with kai, i think it took 5 days. but newborns don't really need baths. i mean, they don't go anywhere and they don't really get into anything... so giving those baths are really ceremonies for parents (and big sisters as it turns out). hana was really interested in helping kai with his bath.

it was during this bath that i really began to notice just how much kai really looks like his sister. i don't know how to do this fancy photography but if i were to split screen the two of them during their respective firsts baths, you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart. keeping hana in the picture helps me not confuse one baby for another in pictures. that sounds pathetic but those who have recently had to care for a newborn understand... i'm tired. tired all of the time... but anyway, the bath was fun and it felt like way less of a production than it did with hana. plus, he actually liked it. hana didn't like her baths until she was much older -almost a year -and could sit in the tub and play with toys...here's she's telling him "it's alright baby brother" in her soft whisper voice. "you'll be ok". it's enough to melt your heart. and in the picture below, she's lamenting that he's still crying. when i explained to her that it was ok, and that he's just getting used to baths, she settled down and went back to trying to comfort him.

she was very excited when i let her help him shampoo his hair. she was saying to herself "gen-to, gen-to, gen-to..." reminding herself of her trianing to be gentle with babies. such a good sister! brought a tear to my eye then... and now just thinking about it.

and in these two pictures, this is where i SO grateful that he is not swaddled in hana's pink bunny towel from when she was a baby. i would not be able to tell these two apart if it were for this clever blue and white towel. at first he didn't like being taken out of the water, but once he was swaddled in the towel, he settled down and actually liked that too. but that's a crap shoot, literally (!), if you spend too long without a diaper, so that sense of calm didn't last long either because we had to unwrap him to get him dressed.