Look, I know bathing isn’t cool right now. Mila and Ashton taught us that. It’s better for the planet to skip the shower, better for your skin and hair not to overdo it on the sulfates, to go a little more natural. All that is fine.

But in my house, especially when it comes to my young children, we are hard-core bathers. For us, bathing is a lot of things: it’s social (our favorite place for knock-knock jokes), athletic (is that a kickboard my youngest has?), competitive (whose Santa beard of bubbles is most convincing?), and therapeutic (we may turn on a song and soak). Let’s just say that my family would have fit in very well in ancient Rome.