NOOOooooo!

10 days, just 10 days of school left...I thought we were going to make it, we didn't. Hayden and Lily have come down with the 'L' word, yup LICE. Yuck!!!! Thankfully I think we caught it semi early, it seems the boys escaped it. We shaved their heads and treated them anyway, but we did not see any evidence on them. The girls were not so lucky.

We tried a couple different non chemical non toxic treatments first. One was drenching their heads in apple cider vinegar, letting it air dry, then coating their hair in coconut oil and letting it sit for 8 hours. This did help, but when we combed through after the 8 hours we still found a few live bugs.

Next we tried Cetaphil. This method comes pretty highly recommended, and we found it to be very successful.

Use the "Gentle Skin Cleanser" formula, get a bottle like you put hair color on with. Then apply the cleanser, to the dry hair and scalp...scalp first, just like hair color. You want to use a LOT (almost a whole 8 oz bottle for short hair and 12 oz for long hair)...until the hair is dripping with it and totally soaked from scalp to ends. Getting the scalp is VERY important.

Thoroughly massage the lotion in and then let it sit for 2 minutes.

Next you comb through the hair, this gets off the excess....put a towel over their shoulders to catch the lotion. You are done when you can't get any more out...the more you get off the quicker the next step goes. You can also spend some time combing for nits at this point.

Next blow dry the hair thoroughly, so that the scalp skin, hair roots, and full length of the hair are totally dry. This takes forever but is very important. The lotion works by drying onto the bugs and plugging up its breathing holes...kind of shrink wraps them. If you leave the scalp and hair partly wet then the lotion can be accidentally rubbed off. By thoroughly drying the lotion in the scalp, the lotion adheres to the lice and kills them.  Leave it sit for 8 hours or over night. Then just shampoo off. 

Repeat this process once a week for three weeks...and of course comb through at least once a day removing any bugs or nits you see.

Treat your house and car as well. Clothes, bedding and anything else that will fit should be put in the dryer on hot for 20 minutes. Stuff that can't go in the dryer should be bagged up and put in the garage or somewhere out of reach for 3-4 days. Brushes and other things we put in the freezer for a couple hours too. Without a human full grown bugs die in 48 hours...newly hatched bugs can only last a couple hours, removed eggs can not hatch. Bugs do not jump or fly...can only be transmitted with close head to head contact or sharing freshly used items.

I feel like I am now an expert on lice. Boy I feel for my mom, my sister and I had hair to our butts and got it three times as kids, after the second time we got very short hair cuts. If I can't get rid of these suckers for good in a timely manner the girls will be getting very short hair cuts too. Thankfully it is almost summer break so a really short cut has time to grow back before school starts.

I vow to never get lax about using the fairy tales spray ever again...I have a feeling this is our fault for skimping on that over the last week or two.

Buzz buzz.

Jericho couldn't stand still...it tickled too much LOL.

They look so different with such short hair...they are so cute though, hair length matters not.

In non Bug news...a little Lily funny from today. Lily was whining about being bored. So I offered up a suggestion to sit down and work on her 1st grade prep work books. She said "no that's boring". I told her she better get used to it, she will be doing them this summer. Miss Sass says..."Nut Uh, we'll be moving in with Grandma and having pool parties all summer, sucker." Say what....wonder how she will like to be grounded all summer....sucker? LOL.