Surprises in Parenting...

So, I think we all know intrinsically that parenting is full of surprises, yet, when it actually happens to you, the shock is still there. I had one of those moments on Monday. Tyler was blissfully still napping when Natalie woke up. Oh, on that note, her newest milestone is that she officially (at the age of 28 months) became able to get in and out of her crib independently, regardless of the toybox at the foot of her crib. We therefore, just removed the one crib wall and put up a mesh half-wall to prevent middle-of-the-night falls. She is now on night 2 of her "big girl bed" and doing GREAT. Okay, back to the original story!

So, Tyler still sleeping but Natalie now awake, I (like always) have a few things that really need to get done for our business. So, I set Natalie up with a movie and run down to the office to try and get those things done. Just about 10 minutes later, I hear her at the top of the stairs saying to me, "Mom, big mess. I made big mess..." Well, I'm thinking to myself that I didn't leave her with food or drink, so what in the world could really be a "big mess." NEVER think this... it's ALWAYS possible I guess. So, I get upstairs to find that she somehow got into the TUB of Vaseline (which was half full and is now EMPTY) and smeared it all over the following:

- The bottom half of the wooden TV stand
- The ENTIRE TV screen and part of the speakers built into the TV
- At least one part of all of our leather furniture
- 60% of the gate at the top of the stairs
- Her clothes, face, arms, and HAIR (ALL OVER HER HAIR)

I'm mortified and she thinks it's just hilarious. That's when discipline kicked in so that she stopped thinking this was so funny. I mean, of course it IS pretty funny, but you don't really want your 2 year old to think it's funny. So, 45 minutes later, I've cleaned up everything but her. She's been in the bath this whole time, mind you, partly as punishment but also because Tyler has been up at this point and I had to clean up everything else first so as not to have him making things even worse. Now, in her defense, I have to say that she did avoid key areas, such as the carpet, and I'm quite thankful to have leather (vs. cloth) furniture. Our TV has never been so shiny, and there's newly hydrated portions to all our furniture...

Little did I know going into this cleaning process that Natalie would actually be the most difficult part of the whole thing! We shampooed twice and when Jon got home, he totally thought her hair was still wet. Nope, 4 hours later, it looked exactly the same since it was just coated with Vaseline that is quite stubborn to get out. So we get to Tuesday and again do 2 shampoos in the am and 2 shampoos at night, all day still looking like we have wet hair. Gross! So, today, I decide I need to do online research. I find that you can either rub cornstarch into the hair or combine some baking soda with your shampoo. We do this and viola! her hair is BEGINNING to look like normal. I'm sure it is some of the most nourished hair at this point but I personally would like it to stop looking like it's wet all the time and feeling sticky/tacky. So, all this to share a funny story and also let you know that if YOU need to get Vaseline out of hair, the baking soda works amazingly well! So now you know.