Tickling my face and washing my eyes.

I love to tickle Isabelle. She has ticklish thighs and feet and armpits. She of course, now likes to tickle back. She likes it when we laugh (even if sometimes feigned) and kick and try to squirm away. Of course, it doen't really tickle all that much. She has little claws with scraggly fingernails (despite my best efforts), so "tickling" is usually some marginally painfull ordeal. Not that she normally would ever need to know this, we just laugh and joyfullly protest, which gives her great glee.

I finally have had to draw the line (well kind of) as her latest fun involves tickling my face at night. There I was, lying next to her cuddling with her cute cubby little self when in saw outlines of small claws raised menacingly just inches from my face. With the battle cry "I tickle your face, Mama!" the claws decended upon my delicate eye area, wriggling and thrusting...I jeked up my hands to cover my eyes, but it was too late, I had been scratched right under my eye, and so I shrieked in pain. This receoling only served to invigoarte and entertain Isabelle and the claws came back for about 39572 more swipes...er, tickles. The whole thing just cracked her up. My poor under-eye wasnt quite so amused.

She still likes to tickle my face, almost every night in fact. But now I am much wiser and much more on gaurd. My gaurd, however, was not up during a recent bath experience. Have you ever had someone rub Purpose face cleanser into your eye when you don't know its coming? No? Well, I can assure you its a most painful thing.

Isabelle sometimes likes to take a bath with me in "Mama's bath." It's very sweet and I don't mind having water pured on me and my armpits tickled (she tells me she is going to "wash" my back and thwen tickles me). That's all good clean fun. Isabelle knows that Mama's special face soap is off limits. Or at least I thought so.

About two weeks ago we were in the bath and I was washing my face. You know how it gets, your eyes are squinched shut and you face sudsy. I had just rinsed my face with a cup of water and was getting to the eye-opening phase when, once again, I felt the stab of little fingers. This time they came with the merry statement "I wash your eyes, Mama" as stinging cleanser was thrust into my squinted orbs. And again, I shrieked, and again Isabelle was delighted.