It Takes A LOT to Knock Me Down....

150 Christmas Cards in the Mail by the first week in December?  Check!
Christmas Open House for 75 of our new friends?  No problem!
Christmas Eve and Day Festivities?  Piece of Cake!
Trip to Massachusetts one month after our Last Trip to Massachusetts?  Of course!
Taxi-ing to takeoff when my husband turns to me and says "I see bugs in Molly's hair"?


WHAAAAAAAAT??????? (record scratch followed by eerie silence)


The little "project" I mentioned two posts ago had nothing to do with fun crafties, or home decorating, or party planning or general mommyhood.  No, my "project" is the eradication of six legged creatures that rhyme with MICE from our lives. 

It was all sorts of fun to find out Molly was completely infested while trapped in a steel barrel with wings at 38,000 feet for two hours.  There was absolutely nothing to do but grin and bear it.  I had to find my happy place and stay there until we landed.  And once we did, the you-know-what hit the fan!

I gave the boys a cursory once-over and, not seeing anything moving, dragged them from the plane, straight to Terminal C's airport salon.  It took 97-year-old Marie about 45 minutes buzz both of them, but it got done.  Jack managed to walk away with the mowhawk he's wanted so desperately because it was the only way I could get him to cut his hair without actually saying "MOLLY HAS LICE!!!" out loud, and panicking the entire building.

We got into our rental car and hightailed it back to my mother's house, where reinforcements were waiting.  I had managed to text a hasty "Molly has lice get shampoo asap" to my sister before the flight attendant caught me, so they had RID shampoo and a variety of large plastic bags ready.  We stripped our jackets and hats and anything else we could remove and sealed them up, and I whisked Miss M up to the bathroom for her 'treament'.  There were at least five live bugs the size of fruit flies crawling around on her scalp, not to mention the itty bitty ones. Blech!

Then the combing began.  Through ten days, one holiday/birthday, a variety of venues and two states, the combing is still going strong.  Two days ago I showed Marc one infinitessimally small nit I found in Molly's hair and he exclaimed "how do you even SEE them?!"  He was right - I feared I was going blind, I had been staring at scalps looking for needles in haystacks for so many hours!  But at least I hadn't seen anything alive on anyone's head since the second day, when I spotted two on Ben's noggin and dragged him at 6am, kicking and screaming, off to the bathroom to be treated.

I called the school Monday to alert them and to make sure Molly could return safely to school.  No sooner had I uttered the words "I haven't seen a live one in nearly a week" when the gods of pe;diculosis laughed at me.  That afternoon, I found three teeny, tiny, nearly invisible, LIVE nymphs (baby lice) in her hair.

Marc finally made the call that we neede to bring in the calvalry.  Ronna from Nit Witz came yesterday to save the day, and whatever shred of sanity I have left.  She checked every head in the house, confirming that the boys were all miraculously nit-free.  And sadly, that the girls, myself included, were not.

After all was said and done, we were given the green light to resume our lives, though Molly and I have a maintenance plan we have to follow which includes;

• daily comb-outs with special gel and a special nit comb
• daily bedding changes
• daily laundering of all clothing, hats and anything else that touched Molly or I
• 3x weekly shampoo treatments
• daily spritz, roll on, gel and leave in conditioner to repel lice from ever wanting to come back

When we go two consecutive comb-outs with no nits, then we can progress to twice weekly comb outs and only changing pillowcases.  Once we go two weeks with no nits, we are free.

It's a whole lot better than my previous plan of laundering anything that wasn't nailed down, and stacking it all up in the laundry room for fear of bringing it back into circulation, combined with round the clock combing and checking of heads, followed by neurotic pacing.

But it seems a long way off for a girl who has about twentyeleven loads of laundry to fold and her own head of hair to comb out.  Part of me thinks a flamethrower or a Sinead O'Connor hairdo might be easier.

I think it's time to pour a glass of wine.