Sticky Situation

I am standing outside in our driveway talking to my friend, Julie, when Colby comes out with his bottom lip trembling and says, "Something's wrong with Nolan. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." I knew it wasn't going to be good since I can hear Nolan's high pitched screams coming from inside and since Colby is continuing to apoligize. As I'm running inside the house I have visions of blood pouring out of his head and I am mentally dreading having to handle an emergency medical situation in the middle of Africa (with Will out of town). But when I get close enough to him I can see that there is no blood and I quickly realize there is no medical emergency- just a little decoration in the little brother's hair...

I ask Colby, "What happened?" and he says, "Nolan wasn't listening to me, so I took out my gum and put it in his hair like this" (and he moves his hand in circles to show me the swirling technique he used to get it in there) . I still can't quite figure out how that was going to help the situation, but...

I immediately get on the phone and ask Julie if she knows how to get gum out of hair (she has 4 kids, so I figure she's tackled this before). She says, "First, you have to take a picture- you will laugh about this later!" (so, as you can see, I did). Then, she gets on the internet and finds about 2 dozen different methods for getting gum out of hair. Many of the ingredients I do not have on hand here in Africa, so I have to pick from the things I can find in my pantry. First I try applying straight cooking oil, but it just keeps dripping out of his hair. So he's sitting on the kitchen counter still screaming, has oil dripping down his face and won't let me touch his head at all because his scalp is sore from continually tugging at the wads of goo stuck in his hair. I quickly look for another ingredient from the list- peanut butter. This ends up working only because I am able to sneak globs of it onto the top of his head without him knowing. I'm having to feed him spoonfuls of it between plops! One bite for Nolan...one plop for the head...one bite for Nolan...one plop for the head...

After I let it sit for a few minutes, per the internet's instructions, I comb it out (ouch!) and we head upstairs to take a bath and rinse it all out. On the way to the stairs I glance over and see Colby. He is zonked out on the couch! I think he was truly exhausted from the guilt (or maybe he just shut down after listening to constant screaming for 30 minutes)!

After 4 scrubbing hair washes he still smells like peanut butter. I figure there are a lot of less desirable smells in the world, and I decide to give up and just pretend he smells like homemade peanut butter cookies.

So I let him play in the bubbles for awhile (he deserved lots of extra bubbles after all that trama) and I go to the next room to put the laundry away. When I walk back into the bathroom he says with a cute, little smile, "Mamma. Poo-Poo." You've got to be kidding me...now he does smell like something less desireable! He just pooped in the bathtub!

Oh my! Time for a shower to rinse off...again. Phew! By this time I am in need of a shower and I need a nap. But I realize we haven't had dinner yet- so I make some peanut butter sandwiches and then it's off to bed (which is no problem for Colby- he's still sleeping!)