As every parent and caregiver of a young child will understand from experience, it takes just an incredibly brief time period before a scene can transform from calm and controlled to chaotic.
Sheila Boevers of Iowa, a mother of two, discovered this when she came upon her 18-month-old daughter, Juliann, in a scene of mayhem. With the most innocent of intentions, the child had become ensconced in a storm of the talc powder that she was using. The talc in baby powder is not made to be inhaled, but mother Sheila kept her calm as she took control of the messy scenario.
The little girl, who had taken the opportunity to practice her own nurturing skills on her baby doll, had lost control of her environment when attempting to put baby powder on her doll. She was sweetly playing in the powder when mom Sheila came in and put her own nurturing skills to the test.
“What did you do?” asked Sheila, in the firm and capable voice that caregivers employ when utilizing a life lesson meant to share wisdom and knowledge with an oh-so-adorable tot. For anyone looking at the scene, it was adorably obvious that the child was seeing to the ablutions of her doll baby, who is almost the size of tiny Juliann. “What did you do?”
When Sheila suggests that the little girl help clean up, Juliann was on it! She gamely selected a tissue and began to wipe away at the talc powder that completely covered the bathroom floor. Not to mention the built-in bathroom porcelain fixtures, the child, the doll, and the very atmosphere of the small but once tidy water closet.
Sheila then gave her preciously powdered little princess a bath. After a good mess comes a great clean up! If Juliann is learning anything from these life lessons we may soon see a video of a certain dolly who is just about Juliann’s size learning to swim! After the amusingly talcumed and sweet-smelling child had her bath, mom Sheila then got out the vacuum and gave chase to the masses of talc powder covering everything. If Juliann could talk she probably would have cheerfully have explained, “Hey mom, that’s why they call it a powder room!”
Actually, Juliann can talk. Being a future star, the child is hitting her milestones with panache. When Sheila captures the scene with a video camera, the child photographically finds the lens of the camera with her luminous eyes and says, “Cheese!”
Sheila is confident that Juliann has learned her lesson about talc powder, also known by some as “baby powder,” possibly for this very reason.
Yet just because Juliann knows about talc powder and the mess it can make in loving little hands, it doesn’t mean that the lesson carried over to the use of body lotion, which is absolutely an entirely different entity altogether.
Which is what mom Sheila discovered when she found not just one daughter but both of them playing with body lotion.