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I have a beard, and my 19-month-old boy loves it. He put it there himself, and he couldn’t be more pleased.

As soon as he sees the white and fragrant bubbles in his bath, Seth runs over to the tub and starts scooping froth to his face until it covers his chin and mouth. Then he carefully licks his lips and turns to me wearing only a big grin and a perfect Colonel Sanders goatee.

“Bubba bead,” he chortles.

Then he smashes a handful of bubbles into my face, and we are suddenly both very manly.

Those mounds of tiny, ethereal bubbles transform the routine of bath time. Until the foaming starts, my sons fight their nightly cleaning as though they think I’m going to dip them in a vat of boiling lye.

“No bath!” screams my 3-year-old, Tom, while running down the hall, refusing to remove his shoes, pants, or shirt. Seth, meanwhile, escapes down the carpeted hall, bare-bottomed and not yet potty-trained. I have spent more than one evening cleaning up after him when he’s been on a peeing spree.

But a squeeze of green-apple bubble bath under running water is a magnetic force, drawing little boys away from their playthings and into the soothing, warm water.

The boys build bubble castles and have bubble fights. Seth is fond of eating the bubbles, something that neither Tom nor I understand. They stir mini-tempests in the bath water, watching as the froth grows exponentially, periodically throwing their plastic pirates overboard to disappear beneath the suds.

And this bearded lady loves it just as much as they do.

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