Some Times It's a Good Thing They Are So Cute...

A few days ago Avery had her friend Anna over after preschool. They play so well together and on the rare occasion have been known to get into a little mischief. The spend a lot of time playing dress ups in Avery's room, which is how this play date was going. As James was napping and I was downstairs doing housework all of a sudden I was enveloped in a cloud of fumes. It took me just a second to place the scent...my perfume. The scent was so strong it was practically choking me now. I cautiously called upstairs, "Um, Avery? Did you get into my perfume?" She did hesitate for a second, but really, how could she hide the fact?! She called back down that she had.

I went upstairs and if I thought the scent was strong downstairs...wow. About this time Anna's mom came to pick her up. Then our friend called from the airport to tell us her plane had landed and they were ready to be picked up. By this time I am nauseated and have a pounding headache. I load the kids in the car, James screaming, and headed out. The smell followed us! It had already attached to our clothes, etc. I apologized to my friend, Kim, for the smell and for James' screaming, since he was still at it. She was super polite about both. But I think her husband missed my explanation about the perfume because about halfway on the ride home I could hear him say through the screaming, "Wow, Avery, you smell really nice." Poor Christian was sandwiched in the back seat right next to Avery.

After dropping our friends off we came home and I suddenly remembered that the exterminator was scheduled to show up at any time. James is still screaming and I was frantically running around the house opening as many windows as I could when Al called excitedly to say he was coming home early. He could hear the screaming in the background and the irritation in my voice was definitely on the rise as I was detailing the perfume incident...especially because while I was on the phone with Al for those few seconds James dumped his snack all over the floor that I had spent forever on my hands and knees mopping while James had napped earlier that day. AAHHH!!!

Al quickly hung up the phone, I am sure wondering if this was the day he really wanted to come home early. James finally stopped screaming and the exterminator showed up right as Al was walking through the door. Luckily things seemed to calm down at that point.

For 2 days, except for at night, I kept the windows open hoping the smell would go away. I would get used to it, but all it took was a quick trip to the grocery store and for me to walk in the door before I was knocked over again by the scent. I washed a ton of things in Avery's room, and of course bathed Avery. It has been 5 days now since it all happened and I think the fumes are mostly gone in the rest of the house. Avery's room still smells lovely, but at least not as strong. I attempted Febreeze a couple days back but I don't know that it worked, except to make the room smell like a Febreeze/perfume combo.