Plague, Pestilence & Obama!

Election coverage in Alaska can make you feel pretty insignificant.  The polls are still open here when CNN declares the winner of the presidential election.  I'm pretty sure our big state will never make or break any national election, but voting still feels good.  And (the best part), you can watch all the live election coverage at a very decent hour and still get to bed on time.  Yay Obama!  But as this is a parenting blog, I digress.

I survived some kind of parenting rite of passage this weekend.  I took Porter to get his hair cut (no, not that).  It had been too long, but hey, it really worked with the werewolf costume.  The barber finishes up, I hand him the cash, and he calls me over to "show me something."  He parts Porter's hair, and three little black things scurry away onto another part of his head.  Oh good Lord.  It took me a second to sort of process what was happening, and the barber says, "I'm not sure what that is, but I think he needs to take a shower."  Completely mortified and put in my place as a horrible parent who doesn't bathe her pestilence ridden child, I got the hell out of there as fast as I could.

Back in the car, I realized that we had a full on case of HEAD LICE.  This was seriously my worst nightmare.  I never had lice as a kid, and it just never crossed my mind.  Even though I got a letter home the other day that it was going around in Porter's school, I never even checked him.  I just didn't think it could happen to us.  On the way home, I ran into the drugstore and bought the biggest bottle of chemicals I could find.  I also called Bryce and cried.  At home, I looked at Porter's head one more time, and really, it was the most awful thing I've ever seen.  And I've seen some gross kid stuff.  All four of us got the pesticide treatment, my good friend Google was consulted, a pile of laundry the size of my entire downstairs bathroom was amassed, and I was feeling sort of okay about it.

That night, Cedar just wasn't sleeping well.  I was feeling bad about the lice shampoo I used on her, as it said right on the bottle not to use it on kids younger than two years, and I thought her head might be bothering her.  So I let her sleep in bed with me for hours.  It was a fitful and entirely not restful night.  After we all got up in the morning, I did a check on each kid's head, and I found a live, living, crawling louse on Cedar's head.  On my baby!  That slept on my pillow all night long.  That probably couldn't sleep because she was itchy.  And my head started crawling all on it's own.  That's when I called Bryce in Petersburg in a hot mess of teary panic.  I needed someone to check my head!  I needed more lice shampoo and I couldn't drive my car, because all the car seats were inside being decontaminated!  Oh my God there were bugs crawling on the baby's head!  And I have to say that Bryce wins the good husband award, because he flew home.  He flew home to spend hours going through our heads with a nit comb (nothing on me or Molly!) and helping me while I washed every freaking towel, sheet, blanket, pillow, coat, hat, car seat cover, dress up costume and stuffed animal in our house.

It's not totally over yet as we all get another pesticide treatment this weekend, but I'm pretty sure that there are no lice or nits anywhere in our house right now.  My head doesn't itch every time I think about it anymore.  I had to take Porter to the school nurse on Monday morning, and he got to go back to class with a big pink post-it note with a zero on it.  I'm also an expert on all things louse related.  And it's not as scary now that we've been through it.  Knock on wood we never have to again.