The battle of the bath!

Just when I think Alex has conquered his aversion to baths and cleanliness-I am wrong.
Saturday night after a sweaty soccer game, jumping on the trampoline, playing outside and then sweating up a storm at Classic Skating Alex took his bath. Since our issues in the past he makes it a ritual to come and let me smell his hair and usually shows me a soap smelling arm that I sniff for approval. Saturday night after his bath his hair didn't smell as fresh and clean as normal but I had just cleaned out the bathroom cabinet and combined a lot of odds and ends of shampoos into the bottle so maybe my concoction just wasn't as sweet smelling as before? I shrug it off.
Sunday morning while my boys are waiting for me to iron their Sunday clothes they begin running around hitting each other with pillows so I send them out to the trampoline to take their rough housing outside. They come in slightly sweaty but someone does not smell good. Not body order just outdoors dirty smell. Austin asks if it's him, I sniff. No. Then Alex walks up and YES it is him. Back in the tub Alex. He grunts but goes unwilling back to the bath. When combing his hair for church it's sort of stiff-like from the chlorine when he swims-I sort of shrug that off too. Maybe there's still chlorine left in it?
Later that day we had a bbq at my sisters where Alex again jumps on the trampoline and rides his scooter too and from so of course he is dismayed when I tell him it's time for yet another bath. He groans tries to protest but there's no persuading me to tuck a dirty, sweaty boy into a clean bed at night. So I hear the water run and then he comes down and has me sniff his hair-it's just not smelling or even feeling clean. I smell his arm. Soap there. I ask to smell his tummy. He's face looks aghast and he groans so I send him back up and tell him this time use soap all over! He comes back down proudly pulls up his shirt for the tummy sniff and I ask to smell his leg. "Leg??" he groans and stomps out starting to cry on his way back upstairs to the bath. What the heck? I invite myself into the bathroom and using our method of covering his privates with a washcloth I soap us his back and limbs and scrub his neck, knees and feet with a scrubby then I get the hand held shower down and do his hair which suds up when I first rinse it. Ah ha! He's only been wetting his hair and adding shampoo to it to pass my sniffing test! No wonder. I supervise the washing of the rest of him! All the while I'm telling him about if he would use soap, he wouldn't smell when he sweats and wouldn't that be easier than faking three baths? He agrees. Then I explain that I must love him to want him to be clean because if I didn't, I wouldn't care if he was dirty or stinky. He agrees that I love him. And once again I have one squeaky clean boy with sweet smelling hair and a shinny nose. I"m happy to report that unlike times in the past, I did not get angry and the night ended with lots of kisses, hugs and giggles. In fact he got up after his tuck in for "one more hug" I told him he could have as many as he likes when he's nice and clean. He told me he needed six hundred thousand!