Babies washing babies

i have a really cute story for everyone. i told you in my last post that we have a new family here, the VanderWerfs. Their youngest daughter, Emma, is only seven years old and last week i got to wash babies with her. On baby washing day last week we had everything set up to get started, we had plenty of people to dump water, wash the older kids hair, almost too many people to do clothes and just the right amount of people to brush hair. But we were a little short on people to wash the little kids. So i went into the tent to help out and i find Emma, sitting by one of the tubs, ready for her first kid. i went to wash with her, figuring she probably wouldn't help much seeing as how the kids are extremely dirty and she wouldn't want to get dirty herself.

The first kid comes up, a boy probably her age and definitely bigger than her. Emma grabs the shampoo bottle and squirts a big glob on his head. She scrubbed and scrubbed that little boy's hair, telling him to close his eyes when she dumped a cup of water over his head. When we were done she grabbed a towel, wrapped it around his arms and tried to pick up that little boy that was a head taller than herself. i took over then, lifted him out of the tub and brought him to his mom. When i turned around Emma was trying to carry the tub of dirty water all by herself to dump outside.

She kept working hard the entire time we were washing kids, scrubbing hair, washing faces. At one point she kicked off her flip flops because her feet were getting to wet. By the end, it looked like she needed a bath. Her hair was stuck to her face, the front of her shirt was all wet and her feet were slimy. And Emma ran off to play with the kids she had just washed, as if it was the most normal thing in the world for a seven year old not to be timid to wash the grimy feet of someone her own age. Maybe that should be the norm.