Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Head Lice!!! (Or, "Memories of the little buggers --of more than one species"

When our sons were small-- I babysat for the little girl across the street for a few weeks. I can't say that it ended happily as when it was almost time for the new school season to start, I took the three older ones to the barber to get their hair cut. Not a minute after the first sat in the barber's chair, the barber called me over with a strange look on his face. I was horrified to see the reason for his expression- my son's hair was infested with a fairly large amount of head lice. I was so embarrassed, but never so much as in the next minute or two when we discovered that all 3 of our older kids, all except the 9 month old, had bunches of bugs in their hair.

On the way home, little Christine said "yeah, well I had them two weeks ago, but my mom told me not to tell ANYONE". Gee, thanks lol.

Sort of on the humorous side, when we got home, I immediately poured copious amounts of insecticide shampoo on each kid's head before letting them go out to play. The first to get the treatment was our 6 hyear old son. He went outside while I was shampooing the next victim-- er, kid, our 7 year old. While doing this, I could hear the 6 year old sashaying up the driveway, and, in that bragging sort of voice that makes parents cringe, he said loudly: "WE have HEAD LICE!!"  The mothers on the street were gathered in an angry mob by the time I got outside after finishing with the 3rd kid. I approached the group, explaining the situation, which allayed the murderous expressions on their faces. It turned out that of 26 kids on our little townhouse cul-de-sac, 24 had head lice. One of the two that was clear was little Christine, bless her.

We called our Pediatrician, who said that the over the counter stuff we'd gotten was not good enough. We needed your basic DDT equivalent (not really DDT but since it was back in 1978, I hate to think of what nasty stuff was iin there.) So there we went, again, but this time I let my husband shampoo them, as if the kids were going to hate me for such treatment, they might as well hate both of us. The same kid who bragged to the neighborhood that all our kids were all infested at our house, screamed at the top of his lungs "YOU'RE KILLING ME!!!" to my husband. The neighborhood's ears must have perked up then too, but I didn't go out to check.

It took us weeks to get all the eggs out of their hair. I finally gave up and more or less shaved it off, as I was tired of the school nurse calling that she had seen a few more eggs on this kid or that, and to come get them. All our sons had very thick hair. It took years before they would happily get hair cuts again. I am not kidding.

Anyway, what made me think of this? I saw this article online about a more natural way to treat the critters (kids and bugs lol!) Avoid our drama and check it out, all you who have kids under the age of 12 or so:




Monday, June 9, 2014

Beautiful New Granddaughter- Evelyn Grace!

Little Evelyn was born 3 months ago. She is exquisitely beautiful, and has such a cute personality. We saw her for the first time 10 days ago.

Newborn


One week old


2 months


Three Months Old