My daughter has been growing her hair long. It’s down past her shoulders now, and she’s asking me to style it differently each day (which we’re both enjoying). It’s become a bit coarse because of the chlorine from swimming (for only 10 minutes at a time, mind you … this is all anyone can fit in between the raindrops and thunderstorms this summer. No bitterness here). The other night, I gave her a brush and asked her to run it through her hair while my husband read her a bedtime story. I went in to say goodnight to one of my boys. His soft nighttime music was playing, and I dozed off in his room for a while (and consqequently never made it back to my daughter’s room to kiss her goodnight … deliquent mother). At 3:00 AM, I heard a voice next to my bed:
“Mommy, we have a little hairbrush problem here.” It was my daughter, who had fallen asleep with the brush in her hair. Now it was all tangled up in there, and the handle was sticking straight out of her head. As moms, we wake up in ways we could never have imagined before having kids, don’t we? I managed to free the brush and walked her back to her room.
Fast forward 2 days. She was playing upstairs and came down to see me in the kitchen, calmly stating, “Mommy, this time it’s not a hairbrush problem but a bubble gum problem. I was chewing my gum and turned my head to say something to my American Girl Doll, and the gum got stuck in my hair.”
It sure did. It wasn’t just “stuck.” It was somehow interwoven into her braid.
“Mommy! Remember you told me that peanut butter can get bubble gum out?” she asked a bit too enthusiastically.
“Yes …” I answered, trying to pull the gum out with my fingers first.
Out came the peanut butter. My daughter found this hilarious.
“I have peanut butter in my hair!” she kept giggling. (What a waste of my favorite food in the whole world, by the way.)
We got the gum out with the Skippy and a good shampoo. My boys are going for haircuts tomorrow, and it may be more than tempting to bring my daughter along! I’m thinking pixie cut …
The World of Author/Mom Alicia Murphy! 
That’s hilarious — we’ll now that’s it over. ! I’m sure it wasn’t so funny at the time !