Lice!

Oh my goodness. We had hoped that we wouldn't ever have to deal with this problem. Or if we did, that we wouldn't have to deal with it until Sophia was in grade school. But no, we have already had our first bout with lice. Yuck!

We had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. We had no plans or houseguests - a rarity for us! I had big plans to get some much needed, much belated, spring cleaning done. And we wanted to do some shopping, watch a movie, and relax. We were able to accomplish most of our list. I had one major project to complete, which I planned to do after dinner Monday. Then came the bugs. So much for tidying the office. (Not that I wanted to tidy the office, but I would have preferred that job to dealing with lice!)

I noticed that Sophia seemed to scratch her head a bit earlier in the day. But, she was overdue for a bath, and the weather had just changed, so I figured she just had an itchy scalp. But then, just before dinner I took a peak at her head and said "Oh crap!"

I made a run to Rite-Aid for some lice-killing chemicals, and as soon as dinner was over, we sprang into action. While Ernie handled leftovers and cleaned up dinner (including unloading and loading the dishwasher!) I put Sophia in the bath. Then after the bath, I combed out Sophia's hair - for TWO HOURS! (I am grateful that Sophia has fine, thin hair, as I can only imagine what it would have been like had her hair been longer or thicker.) While I was doing that, Ernie went to work cleaning her room and the rest of the house. Laundry was started immediately, followed by vacuuming, bagging up all stuffed animals, and spraying any fabric that could not be bagged up or thrown in the wash. I have to say, we really do make a good team.

Sophia was quite a trooper through most of the torture. She lost it toward the end and screamed that she was done, and she really just wanted to be held. She got ice cream for her trouble once she calmed down enough to want some. The poor thing was up two hours past her bedtime! And she now has a new word in her vocabulary - crap. She likes to say that she has crap in her hair. We tried to explain that crap is a word for grownups and mommy should not have said it. We tried explaining what it meant, in hopes that she would not use it anymore. But no, it is her new favorite word.