Lubricated Lyla

It started out a great morning. Everyone was getting dressed and on-the-ball early this morning which was good because I had a lot to get done today. I started by getting Lyla dressed, then left her to play in her room while I went to Nina's room to get her dressed. Just a little background here - Lyla's room was (or at least I assumed) kid proof. We used to keep her lotions, ointment, etc, in the top drawer of her dresser, but when I noticed her bringing the stool from the bathroom into her room to stand on so she could access the non-kid proof drawer, I moved all the messy items out. However, I must have forgotten the Vaseline at the back of the drawer somewhere. I didn't see it, but clearly, it was in there.

Anyway, back to the story. I was in Nina's room getting her dressed, and we were debating the merits of black leggings with polka dots vs. black leggings with ruffels (for those of you who think that's crazy, welcome to the world of a nearly four-year old girl with strong opinions) when I thought I'd peek in on Lyla. This is what I found.

She had found the jar of Vaseline, opened it, and was smearing fistfulls of it all over her face and hair. When I saw her, I didn't know whether to laugh or shout, but I did know that I was going to need a picture of this. It would be too hard to describe otherwise.

After taking a few pictures and laughing about it, I put her in the bath thinking if I washed her hair a few times, the Vaseline would come out. I couldn't have been more wrong. I washed it twice, used conditioner and rinse, then washed it again, and none of the Vaseline came out. I tried combing it out of her hair after the bath, it just stood straight out to the sides.

We had already spent about an hour with the Vaseline incident, so I thought I'd let her hair dry, get in my workout, and see how it looked afterwards, figuring we'd just wash it again tonight. After two hours, the pictures below were still how she looked. It's almost as if her hair was soaking wet. But, it wasn't wet at all. It was just all the Vaseline still stuck in her hair.

My next course of action was a call out to moms I knew asking for advice on how to get Vaseline out of hair. My girlfriends and family came up with some great suggestions for me - a lot of which came from online forums. I guess I'm not the only parent that considered a buzz cut as the only option for getting the Vaseline out. There were suggestions from raw egg and peanut butter to corn starch and de-greaser. I decided to put a hat on Lyla and head to the store to pick up a few potential remedies, and we decided to start with the one that people mentioned as "working" after having tried all the other remedies. I would have never suspected it would work, but I put her back in the tub and rubbed baby oil into her hair. I did that several times with rinsing and washing with dish soap in between. Then, I completed the regimin with two shampoo washes (baby oil isn't the easiest to get out either), and I'd say we have success. Her hair still looks quite slick, and it will probably take a few more washes to get it back to normal, but at least it isn't sticky and coated with Vaseline.

Needless to say, nothing on my "list" got done today, but kudos to Nina who was a great big sister through it all and was very patient, and even helpful, while little sister required so much attention. Kudos also to my mom-helpers who gave me some great internet links, called their hair dressers, and checked in on us to see the progress. As my friend Sallie said, we took one for the team this time. So, now all my friends will know how to get Vaseline out of a kids' hair if they ever need it in the future. They also know where to come for a large supply of baby oil and dish soap!