The One With the Vaseline

Mommies are mommies for a reason.

And Daddies are daddies for a reason.

God gave mommies this incredible gift called "multi-tasking."

And God gave Daddies this incredible gift called "the ability to be able to tune everything out."

Interesting, yes?

I can't count the number of times I have though, MAN I wish I could tune EVERYTHING out like Eric.

He lays sound asleep in bed while I get up CONSTANTLY some nights to one of three kids who is upset in their room.

Eric sets his alarm clock every night to wake up to every morning.

Only he doesn't wake up to it.

No, instead every morning he wakes up to me kicking him to turn OFF the alarm clock which could go off for twenty minutes growing continuously louder and he would STILL sleep through it.

It is SOOO hard for me to do my homework while the kids are awake - I wait and wait and wait until they are having naps, or I get up super early before they are awake or stay up until after they are in bed, because even if Eric is here to monitor them the constant noise makes it impossible at times to accurately describe what the health care reform is much less how it will effect me.

Well a few Fridays back, Eric grabbed the kids.

He gets off early on Fridays, which makes my Friday afternoons at work amazing because I no longer have three kids to keep track of and feed while I am trying to reconcile accounts.

He picked up the three kids, took them home.

I joked and said something like hey maybe you'll have time to make dinner and clean the house up.

Ha ha.

Eric thinks I haven't caught onto this little trick of his yet, but I totally have.

Somehow EVERY Friday night ends up being date night.

Which means Daddy doesn't have to figure out what to make for dinner.

It also means there's no reason to clean the house up because my brothers are coming over to watch the kids and by the time they leave it won't matter anyways.

Yes, Eric, you think you've tricked me.

But I am a Jedi.

You're mind tricks don't work on me.

Anyways.

It was after this particular Friday that I realized what an amazing gift it is that I am ridiculously tuned in to even a microsound coming out of one of my kids throats.

Because otherwise you end up with this.

Now you have to ignore the cute little face that this happened to in order to get the full effect.

Maybe a closer look will help to make this clearer.

You know that jar of vaseline you buy after baby numero uno because someone told you it would help a diaper rash.

And after four years you still have the entire tub minus about three pink finger scoops because you realized not long after purchasing it that it doesn't work that well on diaper rashes only on keeping water off an existing rash, and even that isn't worth the greasy residue that subsides on you're hands for the rest of the day.

Yes, Miss Preslie found that tub of vaseline.

And she proceeded to use it to full potential (i.e. empty tub) all over herself, her hair, her clothes, her bed, her pillows, or expensive leather couch, her tv, her dresser, her shoes, her monkey, and even the monkey's butt. . . . but somehow it never made it near her own.

Eric says he didn't hear a thing.

I believe him.

It's not too surprising considering the two times our alarm has gone off in the middle of the night (both false alarms) he has slept through the blaring of the alarm clear up until the time the police show up.

But I can say such a little act probably would have been heard by my ears that resemble one Horton the Elephant, about a quarter of the way into the jar, rather than waiting all the way until Mom came home and freed Preslie from her cage of a room.

We were going out to dinner with my parents and my sister that night, so there wasn't much I could do with it at the time. But in case any of you have such a misfortune, this is something you should know: just like vaseling repels the wet stuff in diapers, it repels any and all water, including (but I'm sure not limited to) the water from our tub, sink, shower, and hose.

In order to get vaseline out of hair:

1. Saturate hair with baking powder.

2.Saturate baking powder saturated hair with olive oil.

3. Saturate baking powder and olive oil saturated hair with dish soap.

4. Scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub.

5. Rinse

6. Repeat.

About seven hundred times or the equivelant of one entire bottle of olive oil, two bottles of dish soap, and half a bottle of Mommy's really expensive deep cleansing shampoo.

and 7. Don't believe the lies online about how this is EASY to get it out.