It's Just Spicy

Spicy.

Not a word I would normally use to refer to the taste of toothpaste. But, that's the word Leah uses to describe the taste of toothpaste.

Every night.

Leah is pretty committed to routine. If anything out-of-the-ordinary happens in her routine, she protests, sometimes rather vocally. She likes things to happen in regular patterns. One really funny example of this is her insistence on making sure the floor in her room is meticulously clean before she'll get into her bed for her daily nap. If anything (and I mean ANYTHING) is on the floor (that can be seen with the naked eye), she'll protest about it. The feathers from the feather boa in the dress-up box sometimes end up on the floor. It is a great crime for her to go to bed with even ONE of these feathers on the floor!

And so goes our evening bedtime routine.

Just about every night Leah takes a bath with Mary. I proceed to get Mary and Caleb "gooped" with petroleum jelly after bath time. Ah, the blessings to skin allergies! Fortunately, Leah does not have the same allergies, and needs only to dry herself off and get her pajamas on.

After she gets out of the bath, Leah gets herself dressed for bed while I am gooping Mary and Caleb. When I'm done, Mary goes to bed, Caleb goes downstairs to brush his teeth, and Leah gets her teeth brushed by Daddy.

Usually Leah takes her toothbrush and toothpaste out of the drawer in the bathroom while I'm still working on my goop job, so they're ready for me when we go into the bathroom together. I sit down on the toilet, put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, moisten the toothbrush with water, and go to start brushing Leah's teeth.

And every night she says the same thing just as I'm about to put the brush in her mouth.

"It's just spicy."

Every night.

You would think she would realize that she's communicated this fact to me by now, many months after I started brushing her teeth every night before bed.

But, alas, this new revelation is necessary every night.

She has her routine, and it involves reminding Daddy that the toothpaste is "just spicy." No complaints, no problems, just a simple statement of fact.

"Yes, Leah, I know the toothpaste is spicy."