Frosted Flakes

February 2008



The Artist had been needing a haircut. He was outside playing and I thought, I will just take everything outside and do it there...much less to clean up!





I sat him down and got him all ready and started combing his hair and there was a bug. So I picked it out and tossed it in the dirt.


I combed some more and found another bug...and then another...and then another.


In case you haven't guessed by now, yes, he had lice. I was horrified. I know it doesn't say anything about how dirty you are (which we aren't) or how bad a mother you are (which I'm not...most of the time), but still...


Lice.






The "L" word.


The word that is more horrifying to me than any other word. This is the first (and hopefully last) time we have had to deal with it.


Thank goodness he was not in school, although I did call them and let them know, just in case. But I did have to call my mom, and my sister, and my sister-in-law because we were just with them on Sunday night.


Then came the fun part. I ran to Wal-Mart and bought the kit and got started.


First, I buzzed his hair. Thank goodness it's warm and he looks good in a buzz.


Then I started with the shampoo. Oh, the bugs that were in his hair! Ewwwww!


Then we had to do the combing. He was crying because the comb is very fine tooth, as it should be, and it was doing its job, but it pulled the nits off the hair and pulled the hair.


I could hear it pulling. He was crying, I was crying, it was awful.


In the meantime, I had The Teenager and The Chocoholic going around stripping everyone's beds, putting all the stuffed animals in bags for 2 weeks, spraying down mattresses and couches. It was definitely NOT the way I had planned to spend my afternoon.


I did laundry from 3:30 until 10:30 that night. Ugh. It was traumatic. I did laundry all the next day long. I started at 6:00 in the morning and finally finished at 6:30 p.m. All in all, I did 18 loads of laundry. Granted, some of the loads were just 2 pillows, but the noise all day long. I had a little bit of a headache.


I decided that we needed a code word so that we could talk about it and not worry if someone overheard us. So lice became Frosted Flakes.


Remember when The Artist had Frosted Flakes? I will never forget!