Hair jelly conundrum

I must confess, I get quite excited when the kids go down for a nap on the weekends. With three kids under the age of 5, I could use a 90-minute Mommy break. Let’s be real!

So, this past Sunday I put all 3 kids Jack (5 years), Olivia (4 years), Claire (2 years) down for their nap…..or so I thought.

I went downstairs and started to fold laundry, pinned a few things on Pinterest (yes, I am a fanatic pinner), put up dishes, and all of the Mommy things you are tasked with on the weekend.  When I finally sat down, my three small kiddos came up to me and said, “look Mom, we have hair jelly.”

I thought to myself, they just wet their hair or maybe put in some styling products and I then shuffled them back for their nap.  I wasn’t so lucky.  They didn’t use water; they didn’t use any styling products.  It was worse. They found a small container of Vaseline in their bathroom drawer and decided to apply it to their hair, staircase, bed sheets, toys, bedroom door, floor, pool table and I am sure many other places around our house that I haven’t found yet.

I wasn’t upset; I was just a bit confused to what led all three of them to do this when they have plenty of toys.

After washing their hair three times, applying cornstarch, applying a clarifying shampoo, washing their hair in Dawn (supposed to cut grease), I am fresh out of ideas. Maybe it will eventually come out of their hair but for now, they will have super shiny hair that will not budge out of place!   I try not to sweat the small stuff in life and laugh at the funny things they do and the joy they bring us.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not searching for ideas. Anyone have any other ideas of how to get Vaseline out of hair?

Christy Benson is director of Clinical Informatics Analysis & Measurement for Texas Health Resources and the Mom to four, the oldest of whom wasn’t part of the hair jelly incident.