The Vaseline Incident

2012-01-31 Recently, I have been giving my 2 and half year old son, Turner, and almost 4 year old daughter, Abbigayle, a little bit more freedom in the house by allowing them to play upstairs in their rooms unsupervised.

At first, they were doing really good; playing house while Turner permitted Abbi to dress him up as a princess. I can hear them running around upstairs with only the occasional cry for “Mommy”. I would go and break up whatever little scuffle they were having and go back downstairs.

As every parent knows, as soon as you hear silence, you immediately know that something is wrong. In this case, that silence never came.

I was sitting at my dinning room table with my husband when down came my son. Now for reference, I take a cup of water to bed with me each night and sometimes forget to bring it down with me in the morning. When my son came downstairs, it looked as if he was soaked from head to toe. I asked him “Turner, did you spill water all over yourself?” He quickly replied with a soft stutter, “It’s not water”. I went to grab his arm and immediately realized that he was, in fact, telling me the truth. Nonetheless, I took him upstairs to find out what could possibly be all over him.

As I enter my bedroom, my daughter is hiding underneath my bed and emanating from my room was a smell that you know you should recognize but can’t quite place. It smells baby fresh…almost the smell you get right after you change a diaper.

I am calling for my daughter, who has now given away her position under my bed by giggling. “Abbi, what is all over your brother?” A little movement from under the bed and out comes Abbi… nice and shiny. “What have you gotten into?” To which my daughter replies, “Turner did it!” Now, due to the fact that she will not tell me what it is that she had done, I can only fear the worst. I start thinking about all the things that are easily accessible in my room that they can get into. As I round the corner of my bed, I see the culprit. A Costco size jar a Vaseline is peaking from underneath my nightstand…completely empty (this life-size jar of Vaseline was on top of the banister, where the kids could not reach). The smell of baby freshness is getting stronger. As I am standing parallel with the side of my bed, my children decided to redecorate my carpet, walls, bed, bed frame, blankets and any available item of clothing they could find. As you can imagine, I am speechless so I put my kids into their rooms until I can figure out my next move. Trick is to let them think you know what you are doing. They can smell fear.

I call up my husband and show him what his children have done. We grab a few old towels and get to work. Vaseline doesn’t just “wipe off” of anything. The more you scrub, the more you just spread it around. Just when you think you have cleaned it all, you lean against the wall and find another glob of it or reach in between the frame and mattress and find a chunk of it just waiting for you. Unbeknownst to me, as we were cleaning, my daughter used her ninja skills to climb on my bed and point out all the spots we missed. Now the Vaseline is on top of my bed.
We did the best we could then decide to attack the Vaseline on the kids. I start the bath and put the kids in the water. 2 minutes later, the bath water went from clear to a nicotine yellow tinge. For future reference, it takes about 5 to 6 baths to get Vaseline out of hair. Pantene shampoo works pretty well, in case you are ever in the same situation! We didn’t leave the house for a week. It looked like we hadn’t bathed our kids on a month.

Moral of the story: Either lock up anything and everything that is not considered a toy or never let them out of your sight.