Girlymama

On Friday morning, I got news that made my skin crawl. One of my kids had lice.
LICE.
We’ve never had lice before. I had dreaded this since they started school. Friends of mine who have gone through it had told me its horrors. When the school nurse told me, I just about died.

As my kids have a tendency to get dandruff, I wasn’t sure what the difference was. But the school nurse showed me dandruff on one kid and lice on the other. The dandruff looked similar, but felt different. With lice, the specks were harder and they stuck to the hair. Dandruff could be flicked out of hair, but the lice eggs (nits) stick to the hair – you have to pull them all the way off the piece of hair they are stuck to. She checked all the kids and me and just the one kid had it, thank goodness. So we went to the drugstore and got the shampoo.

Here’s what we did to treat lice…

For the infected child:

• Treated infected child with Lice Killing Shampoo.
• Spent approximately 5 hours cleaning nit eggs and freaking BUGS out of my child’s hair. The lice comb helped with separating the hair and snagging the bugs (again… EWW!) but it didn’t help with the nits. I had to pull those out with my thumb and finger – I’ve read that flea combs work well with this.
• Washed hair every day with Lice Repelling Shampoo (not sure if this helps, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.)
• Checked her hair for more eggs, combing them out, twice a day.
• Washed her bedding every day (including putting her comforter and pillow in a hot dryer for 30 minutes).
• Kept her hair pulled back.
• Put a pillow case behind her on the couch and over her seat in the car.

For the house:

• Washed everything not nailed down. All bedding (EVERY one’s bedding), all our clothes that had been worn recently, all of our jackets, all the towels.
• Vacuumed the whole house, including all couches, chairs, mattresses, etc.
• Vacuumed out the car, especially the seats where the child sits. (Empty vacuum canister and throw away outside.)
• All pillows and comforters went into a hot dryer for 30 minutes.
• Sprayed car seats and infected child’s mattress with lice killing spray.
• Placed all stuffed animals in plastic bags and put in the attic for 3 weeks. (In related news, we have too many stuffed animals.)
• Placed all throw pillows in plastic bags in the attic for 3 weeks. Washed all throws in hot water.
• Soaked all hairbrushes and combs in alcohol for 10 minutes.
• Places all headbands, hair ribbons, etc in plastic bags and put in attic for 3 weeks.

For the family:

• Checked us for lice daily. (Actually, more than daily. I was worried.)
• Started washing our hair every day with Babo Botanicals Lice Repelling Shampoo with Tea Tree Oil and Rosemary and Lice Repeling Spray.
• Washed all of our pillowcases every day (and put pillows in a hot dryer for 10 minutes).

Facts about lice I found out from the papers the school nurse gave me and researching on the internet:

• Lice lives only on humans – not pets.
• Lice spread easily from one person to another through close contact or through shared clothing or personal items (such as hats or when kids pile their coats together).
• A louse cannot jump or fly.
• Lice can be spread via furniture, etc if a non-infected person sits the the same place an infected person just sat.
• Lice can live for about 24 hours off the scalp. (Again, keep vacuuming!) If a nit falls on a carpet, and it manages to hatch, the louse will die without human blood.

Have you ever dealt with lice in your house? Share your tips!

Saturday morning it started snowing. In October.

At first it was kinda fun. The snow was so pretty and it was the first snow of the season, after all.

Less than two hours later, when a giant 20-foot branch slammed into our house and landed on the deck, we decided it wasn’t so much fun after all.

What followed was probably the most scared I’ve been in my home. We were helpless – when a giant branch landed inches from where my husband and I had been standing a minute before we decided to stay inside. There was nothing we could do except check out the window when we heard something fall. Or hit the roof. Or bang into the kitchen window. Nothing like seeing this outside the kitchen window when you normally see the swingset.

We lay in bed that night hearing cracks followed by trees falling. Literally every 15 minutes or so we heard something. We bolted out of bed at around 2:30am when something banged into the roof over our bedroom, but it was so dark we couldn’t see what happened.

The next morning we woke up to this:

Our road is still closed.

Our poor tree…

How did you fare?