This post will make you itchy.

(Ella is our only picky eater.  Ben and I can do nothing to convince her to eat her food, but Lily often steps in and "shares" both of their plates.  They eat from the same spoon and everything.  If it gets Ella to eat, I don't really care.)

Back in May, I clearly remember Lily coming into my bathroom to get her hair blow dried.  We had just gone to the pool and came home to shower.  After I dried it I was curling it with my straightener when I saw it: a louse.

Basically, I freaked out.

At first I was in denial, but then when I saw 3 more, I knew she definitely had lice.  We treated her right away and then looked through everyone else's hair.  Ella was by far the worst.  She had over 20 lice in her hair and countless nits.  The only reason why I didn't see them before was because they blended in so easily with her blond hair.  We didn't find any lice in my hair, but we did find nits.  Everybody was treated.  But then the real work began.  We had to wash all the bedding, clothes, towels, and their favorite stuffed animals.  We vacuumed and and cleaned the brushes.  We spent hours going through everyone's hair each day.  I thought we had done well and that we wouldn't see another louse or nit again.

Wrong.

3 weeks later we started over.  I can say this -- since then we've never seen another louse, but we have seen plenty of nits and nits can't come from nothing.  We did everything all over again.

And then again 3 weeks later.

And then again 3 weeks later.

And again and again.... until last month.

Each time we rediscovered nits in someone hair (and when I say "someone" I mean one of us girls because we were the only 3 who went through this) we would step up our game a little more -- try a different lice treatment, put the helmets in the freezer, treat the mattresses and booster seats, etc.  I feel like every time I discovered it, I gave almost 2 whole days of my life to treating them.

Then a cover story in our local news was how NC was suffering from lice that couldn't be killed by lice shampoos like Rid or Nix.  So the next time (our hopefully final time) we discovered nits, I decided not to use chemicals but to go the mayo route.  Lily, Ella, and I had mayo hair in shower caps overnight and boy was that a terrible night.  I will never do that again.  Next time I'll do it during the day.  Just FYI, mayo melting down your face and drenching your pillow while you're trying to sleep is really gross.

We also started putting tea tree oil in our shampoo and conditioner, because I'm willing to try anything and the preventative lice shampoos didn't work.  I have kept a record of every time we discovered nits and it was every 3 weeks on the nose.  We are 5 weeks out and I think it's finally safe to say that we are done.

So here is my advice on lice should you ever need it.  I truly hope you don't.

• The first time you find lice/nits, go crazy and treat absolutely everything.  It will be well spent time to get rid of it your first round.  Lice shampoo and sprays are expensive and buying them every 3 weeks can add up -- especially when your 3 year-old is a toddler Rapunzel and needs her own bottle.  If you think you've been thorough enough, you haven't been thorough enough.
• Don't be that person who passes it around.  Don't take this lightly because this isn't a disease or sickness.  If we wouldn't have found lice in the first place, we would be a couple hundred bucks richer and I would have had many more sane days instead of days doing laundry from morning until night.

A year ago I was at a baby shower when we played "Would You Rather."  The question they asked me was whether I would rather deal with lice or stomach flu.  I answered lice.  Now I can say that I would gladly change my answer to stomach flu.  

And to make Ben's family laugh, I think this year on our Thanksgiving thankful chart, we will be writing about how grateful we are not to have lice.  :)