bath obsession

Since his bath with Chloe a couple of weeks back, Dennis has become almost obsessed with bathing. Every day, several times a day, he pulls one of us to the bathroom by a pant leg and points to the tub and says "bath?". He and Chloe had a wonderful time splashing each other and playing with his bath toys, and Ellen taught him a neat trick about filling a cup and launching it from underwater that he's replicated dozens of times. He begged us until we got his boats out of the tub and put them in the regular toy rotation, and he plays with his boats daily. But that hasn't stopped him from begging us to bathe very frequently.

It may be a new cleanliness streak. While he was eating macaroni and cheese tonight, he kept holding his hand out so that I could wipe his fingers between bites. He didn't want cheese residue on them. I tried to teach him to lick his fingers (what was I thinking??) clean, and he tried it, but it didn't clean them to his satisfaction. I also tried to explain that if he used his spoon or fork, his fingers wouldn't get so disgusting. He has been much better about using a utensil, but he still only uses it for about half his meal. He prefers to shovel it in with his hands for a few minutes and then try the fork. This just gets the fork or spoon handle as disgusting as his fingers.

I wonder if this clean streak will extend to picking up his toys.