Need advice about non-responsive keyboard

Hi all. I need some advice about the keyboard on my HP Pavilion dv7 laptop. I made the mistake of leaving my 18 month old and his juice box alone with the laptop for a few minutes. Several drops were all over the keys and the touchpad and on the table and floor. In my zest to clean up the liquid on the keys, I think I may have made the problem worse when I wiped the keyboard with a wet paper towel. It wasn't sopping wet, but still probably wetter than the liquid it was sopping up. I shut the computer down and put it away to charge thinking that there was no problem. Opened it the next morning and found that when I typed anything only about half the letters actually appeared and the backspace and delete keys didn't work at all.

I read something suggesting I remove the battery and replace it. I was thinking that this might work if the problem wasn't the liquid but maybe something happened when I wiped all the keys vigorously. Well it worked a bit, the backspace key worked for a while and some keys that didn't work before were working but many were still not working.

A friend said it might need longer to dry out especially since it was closed all night. Another person said I should just take it to someone to remove the keyboard bezel and clean it thoroughly.

So my question is if I should wait this out or take it to someone. I've never taken a computer to anyone for repair, but I don't feel comfortable disassembling my laptop.