Mommy Lesson #257

Vasoline & Hair

Ahh yes.  I'm kind of a nim-wit sometimes.  And as a new mother, I often feel that these "nim-wit" moments are becoming more frequent.  Why is that?  

Do aliens come and suck your brain cells out the second you give birth?

I wonder sometimes.

Well, enough of that "waxing-philosophical" talk of lost brain cells and aliens.  Maybe this will be the topic of a future post.  

Now where was I?  Right...Vasoline and hair.

Here is my story in all its gory details:

So, Lois and I were hanging out together the other night while Jason was working the night away at the hospital.  Lois had been suffering from a mild case of cradle cap and I had been meaning to do something about it for weeks.  I finally got the bug to do something about it, so I did.  

Now, before I go any further, I'd like to preface the story with the fact that back in the day when Lois was about a month old, we went for a "well" visit to her pediatrician.  She had a little bit of cradle cap then and I vaguely remember him saying that all you do is rub some Vasoline on her head and then wash it out.  But you know, I was in a huge, black fog at that point in her life, so who really knows what he said.  

So, there I was.  Tub of Vasoline in hand and a head full of hair in front of me. I proceeded to dig a good amount of Vasoline out and rubbed it all over Lois' head, trying my best to get to the affected area of her scalp.  After about five minutes, I was satisfied with the amount of goop that was in her hair and decided to let her play around while it "sunk" in.

And boy did it sink in.

I gave her a bath and washed her hair twice, just to make sure that I got all of the Vasoline out.

At this point in time, I still didn't realize that Vasoline wasn't shampoo soluable.

Fortunately for me, I took these pictures that night, not even realizing that they'd be great visual aids for my lovely story.

Here we are hanging out after she got out of the bath.  Stupid me thought that her hair was just WET.  Ha!

I just have to note that we have IDENTICAL chins.  This picture totally proves it.

Nice slicky hair, baby!  What's your secret?

Oh, Vasoline?  Nice.

Um, still thinking her hair was WET. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, DUMMMb!

Obviously, when Lois woke up in the morning, it was as if I had never even washed her hair.  I was horrified!  How the heck was I supposed to get this out of her hair?

So naturally, I kind of panicked.  I didn't want to have to take my greasy haired child out of the house and have others wonder why I never washed her hair!

My first thought was to GOOGLE a solution.  Google always has answers - and I was pretty sure that I was not the only nim-wit out there.  So I frantically typed in:  "how to get Vasoline out of my child's hair" and sure enough, there was about twelve entries.  

HA!  Vindicated.  At least I wasn't the only one!  

As I read, the first thing I learned was that the appropriate way to treat cradle cap is to use baby oil, olive oil or some sort of dandruff shampoo.  No mention of plastering Vasoline all over your kid's noggin'.   This could have been brought to my attention yesterday.

Second thing I learned?  The anecdote to getting Vasoline out of hair is to sprinkle corn starch all over it, let it sit for ten minutes and then wash it out. 

Our gray haired ten-month old.

Nice hair, Lois.  What?  Did your mom put Vasoline in your hair or something?

I have to say thank you to Google and other nim-wit mothers for the precious information.  My child's hair is now back to normal thanks to your help.

The good news?  Lois' cradle cap is gone - so this catastrophe wasn't for nothing!

AND I now know what to use when my kids want to dress up for Halloween and want gray hair.

Until my next nim-wit moment...