Sticky situation

 Last night I let the kids stay up a bit longer than usual.   Obviously there was no school in the morning and Nathan's early Saturday soccer game had been cancelled - we had no other plans.  Jake was in Moab for his Adventure Xstream race (more on that later if he completes his assignment of taking pictures and they are blog worthy).  About 9:45 I finally send the kids up to bed and nearly 40 minutes later I hear little foot steps coming down the stairs.  

"Go back to bed." I say before the sneaker even appears around the corner.  

"I can't." The tiny, squeaky voice gives her away.

"Yes you can, Elle. Turn around and go back upstairs.  It's late."  

"But I can't sleep with my hair all sticky on me.  It hurts."  She comes down anyway.  

"Why is your hair all sticky on you?"  

"Because of the gum in it.  See?" 

 Gum?!  Gum.  I was confused.  I stare at the wad in her hair for several minutes processing all the questions I had floating around in my head.  Why did it take her so long to tell me she had a huge wad of gum in her hair?  How had I not noticed it?  Where did she get this gum?  There must be some mistake - we don't have any gum in the house.  Do we?  You see, gum is pretty much considered contraband around here.  I get a bit of anxiety thinking about it just sitting there, plugging up their insides when they swallow it.  But my real beef with the stuff is that is has been stuck to little fingers, faces, homework, the seat of my pants, and worst of all: it was tracked in on a shoe and smeared on the carpet in my brand new car.  

Snap out of it.  We have a situation here.  It is in fact gum and it is in fact stuck in her hair.  ugh.  Really stuck in her hair.  Ok, time to consult the experts - Google.  I quickly scan a few 'how to' forums and get set up.  There were plenty of ideas out there and each one promised success.  Maybe we were going to get through this just fine after all. 

Yeah, not so fast.  I'll try to be nice, but I will say this oh wise Internet posters: have ANY of you actually tried the solutions you swear work like a charm?  Because ice doesn't do anything except freeze your hand and make a cold drippy mess down your arm.  And I don't know who had the genius idea to add another sticky substance to the hair - I'm talking to you peanut butter people - but it also most definitely does NOT work.  Also on my list of don'ts: mayonnaise, Vaseline, and Crisco (although I didn't have any - my substitution of olive oil didn't work either, so I'm guessing Crisco would have been a no-go).  I opted to totally skip the suggestion to put conditioner on the gum and flat iron it out -  mostly because I didn't want to set fire to the poor child's head with all the extra gunk that was now attached to the gum.  All I needed was to add 200 degree heat directly to that messy mix.  

At this point I was pretty far down the page of 'testimonials' and getting very frustrated - so was Gavin since we woke him up with all the rooting around in cupboards for these remedies.  I was pretty desperate entering the second hour of Operation Get the Gum Out when the gum was so obviously winning and the baby was screaming, needing to be fed.  I was one attempt away from giving up for the night and calling in the big guns the next day: Aunt Sophie and her magic scissors.  One Internet poster said to try Goo Gone.  It was "Amazing - the gum just slid right out!"  Ooh, I have some of that.  I was skeptical but willing.  I read the caution label on the bottle quickly before starting but then wished I hadn't.  Although it didn't specifically tell you not to put it in hair, it did say don't try to treat a stain while you were still wearing the clothing.  Hmmm.  Spraying it in her hair was a lot more contact than pre-treating a stain before changing out of the shirt and would probably not be recommended.  Well, I would just have to be careful and the Goo Gone would either magically work for us or it would turn her hair all shades of green and purple - at which point we'd be cutting it off in the morning anyway so really, what did we have to lose?  

As it turns out . . . drum roll, please . . . we were successful!!  The gum was out!!  I was about to fist pump and shout "Victory!  ha!  Megan: 1, Gum wad: 0!" when I noticed the minor bald spot left behind and the amount of hair stuck to the gum dangling from the comb and decided maybe we could just call it a tie.  It didn't exactly slide right out of the hair like promised anyway.  In fact I'm not even entirely sure it really was the Goo Gone at all.  I think it was more Elle's hair finally giving up and just releasing itself from her head in a last ditch effort to get me to leave it alone.  After a quick shampoo in the sink Elle skipped happily off to bed, no lasting harm done, and hopefully having learned her lesson.  

Watch out Valentine Blow Pops - you're on my list.