There's a baby in the Vaseline!

Me holding the naughtiest thing on the planet at
String Lake in Grand Teton National Park.

I'll never be able to figure out how my one-year-old daughter crams so much naughtiness into that tiny little body.

Take tonight's good news/bad news, for instance. I'll give you the bad news first: while I did a 30-second errand to a different part of the house, Cute Little Head, my daughter, had to see what trouble she could cause, obviously.

So when I returned from the brief errand, I found an open Vaseline jar repeatedly slipping out of her newly greased hands.

I didn't even know we had Vaseline. Where'd she get that? How'd she get it open?

Now when I say greased, I mean completely and helplessly at the mercy of a half-inch thick layer of petroleum. She could have picked up small rocks without using her opposable thumbs, which have probably gotten more workout than the chubby digits of any child her age because of her food-scrounging habits.

After the Vaseline jar clattered to the ground to spread grease in a bouncy smear across the wood floor - thankfully not the carpet -  I watched her flick her hands wildly to try and get rid of the slime. Tiny bits of Vaseline rocketed off her jiggy hands and attached to the wall like little slugs. That didn't do much to fix her situation, so I had to intervene. When I picked her up from the tornado-like circle she was turning to try and dislodge the Vaseline from her paws, I realized it was worse than I thought. Her chubby hands were barely visible through the thick layer of grease she had managed to get almost up to her elbows, jammies and all. A murky outline of round digits waved up through the pure petroleum. I spent the next half hour cleaning up after her.

When I got her to the sink, she desperately lunged for the spigot, dropping her little tushy into the sink to try and get the water running. Of course, since water is useless against the fiend that is Vaseline, all she really managed to do was soak her jammies from the waist down with cold water and make the circumference of the faucet handle a little bigger by adding a layer of petroleum.

I stripped her down to her diaper and started by using my hand as a squeegee to get as much of the sticky slime off her hands as possible. Since I had to be firm to maximize effectiveness, she looked at me like I was a villain and jutted her chin out at me so her two bottom teeth pointed at me accusingly.

After a long stay in the sink with a washcloth and jammies converted into a backup washcloth, her hands and arms looked sunburned from all the rubbing. Other than the glares, though, she took it pretty well. And now you could shine a fleet of cars with those two pieces of fabric.

Now the good news:
1. My hands feel softer than they ever have.
2. The wood underneath the disaster zone is uber shiny.
3. I could go swimming and a good portion of my body would come out dry with only a few beads of water left atop the film of Vaseline still hanging out there.
4. I'm pretty sure I could do the Tom Cruise underwear slide down the hall without wearing socks.
5. We're pretty much out of Vaseline.
6. No greased babies slipped from my hands during cleanup.
7. Mine and baby's fingerprints will be visible to the naked eye for the next week, making crime seem less tempting.
8. Baby is asleep as I write this.

You may think this is funny. If you do, stop laughing. Karma will make your kid do something even worse. I think I have to improve my zone defense.