My Worst Nightmare

Lice that is.

It all started with a short text from a friend. "Just a warning, Alice has lice, and I know she and Collins have gotten so close lately." Cut to me asking Collins if she and Alice touched heads at all recently. "Oh yes- at basketball practice- I'm taller than Alice and she puts her head on my shoulder during breaks." 😱

As soon as I saw that message, I knew Collins had lice. Her head had been itching lately, and I had checked her for lice but didn't really know what to look for because we had never had it before. 

But that Friday afternoon after school, I checked her head again and screamed when I saw an actual bug move in her hair. It is a shocking thing to see on your child. That moment took us down a long and dirty road of removing the lice both from my child's head and all of our stuff.

I won't traumatize you with the gory details from that night, but I will tell you it was one of the grossest parenting moments I have ever had. It is disgusting to pull bugs out of your daughter's hair, and poor Collins had to sit and endure that icky process for way too long.

Then the removal of all our stuff began- pillows, comforters, stuffed animals, rugs, etc. all had to be bagged and put outside. I started the washing and drying and checking everyone else's head. No one was safe at this point. 

I learned more about lice in those first 24 hours then I have in my entire 40 years. Hence the tight buns...lice don't like hair that's pulled up tight with hairspray on it. All the girls sported buns the whole weekend. 

We finally left the house when I couldn't take anymore cleaning and laundry. We took the kids to the NC State women's gymnastics meet.

It was actually entertaining, and then we went to the PR for burgers afterwards. So the night was saved. But the trauma of the lice was still very fresh, and there was still LOTS of work to do which I found overwhelming. You hear horror stories about lice, and FYI- it's all true!