Lice is Nice.....NOT!

As if we haven't been plagued enough by giant cockroaches, ants and a recent swarm of suicide bees, our family has now been visited by and old, but new "bug visitor".....LICE!

For those of you who are totally grossed out, thinking I never bathe my children, just a little FYI:

*Lice LIKE clean hair, much better than they like dirty hair.

*They especially lOVE long, clean hair, and they ADORE long, clean, course hair. That is 3 strikes against Mo and 2 strikes against Mishy. (Mish has fine hair)

*Also, its not just for girls anymore. Lice are not gender specific so just because you have a boy don't get lured into a false sense of security.

*Lice can only live for up to 8 hours on surfaces other than the back of your skull. So cleaning and disinfecting the whole house is a waste of time. Treat your head and go to bed. By morning anyone left on the carpet or couch is now collateral damage.

Unfortunately we are no strangers to lice. Living over seas has given us many opportunities to get to know these little head-biters and I am a proficient when it comes to inspecting little heads. I now have an eagle eye that can spot a knit from centimeters away!

England has by far been the absolute worst place with regards to lice. Our kids attended the local British school where the policy on head lice was "Mums the word"! Teachers were not even allowed to tell a student they had it, and telling the parent was an absolute no-no. Needless to say, my Mo had lice 3 times in one year, hence my professional lice investigative skills. By the end of the year we cut her hair so short that it looked more like a helmet than hair.

Cairo was a nice reprieve from head lice for our family. Although, since I was 'experienced' with inspecting and detecting, I was recruited by the head nurse at the school to help with classroom lice checks throughout the year. Good times!

Believe it or not we even had a case while living in the states. Those little buggers know no bounds.

I don't know why, maybe its because its been so long since we've had to include RID on the grocery list, or just that my kids are older now, but I have sort of felt immune to this problem....until now.

Last week I got a call from the nurse, Mishy has head-lice and they are sending Mo home as well, just to be safe because they think they may have found an egg in her hair. As soon as the nurse said the word "lice" I had a really bad feeling in my gut. I had noticed the last couple of days that the back of my head was itching an awful lot. NICE, now I have it too!

So home we went, recruited a neighbor to help and we had a RID party in the bathroom. Three hours later we all emerged with wet heads and a sigh of relief. End of the lice story right.....NOT.

Although Big T and Little T had been checked the same day as the girls, being family members and all, they received a clean bill of health. Two days later however, I received a call to come and get the boys. There were 6 students going home that day from Little T's class alone. Apparently there has been an outbreak in the school just 2 weeks before school is out. Thanks for that!

Richard was they only lucky one in the family that didn't have to deal with pesticide shampoo or lice combing. He doesn't realize how lucky he is!

On a side note; Medicated shampoo wasn't going to cut it for Big T. He decided to take a much more aggressive approach in defense of his head.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Is your head itching yet?