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Blackbeltmama, you're welcome!

Lisa Stone — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:13:54 -0500

KYF Princess award

blackbeltmama — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:59:37 -0500

I can't believe I'm just seeing this now! I'm a little late huh? Well, thank you very much for the kick your fanny princess award. I'm honored!

Link TextBlack Belt Mama

Stock up on the tea tree oil shampoo

Lisa Stone — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:32:09 -0600

I hear you E. I think the comments above already include the best advice I've heard -- words to live, comb and scratch by, seriously. Best of luck with this.

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

Next time you see me I'll be wearing one of these

Lisa Stone — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:30:35 -0600

...great idea. Wonder if I can get my ten-year-old into a pink jacket. It IS his color, whether or not he'll admit it in the "cooties" phase...

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

Lots a Lice

erickajb — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 02:03:14 -0600

I think it's a shame that the schools don't have stricter policies like they did before.

My sister and I got lice from a friend when we were in middle school about 20 years ago. We had to be lice and egg free when we went back to school. The school was called and the nurse had to check our hair before we were let back into the classroom.

My friend and her 19 months old son got head lice from her sister's kids about 2 months ago. Her sister's 4 kids have been coming home with lice off and on for over 2 years now.

The schools around my area changed the policy and kids can go back to school with eggs but as long as they don't have any lice bugs. I guess the school board didn't take into consideration that eggs hatch and the solution kills all bugs but not all eggs. It only takes one and the process starts all over again.

It makes me nervous just thinking about sending my son to school in a few years.

my aunt

Mistress Of The Dorkness — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 21:52:36 -0600

my aunt is a proud mother of 4. three boys first. ~getting out the clippers and shaving some heads~ and then along came a little blonde-haired beauty. :-/ can't exactly shave her head. my aunt was understandably distrustful of the coat closets in the schoolrooms where everyone's jackets are crammed in there together. she picked up my cousin a cute little pink jacket that, when you pulled on a string, rolled up into a cool little carrying ball/case/thing... it amused my cousin so much, she's roll up her coat and it would fit nicely in her cubby... I think it helped.

Melanie Perry
*not all who wander are lost*
my blog

The "Lice-y J"?? Eeek!

Lisa Stone — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 11:50:58 -0600

Leslie, I am sitting in a cafe, wiping away tears. Laughter, that is. How fantastic that all you girl scouts were in the same condition -- cameraderie in a time of need. I think that's exactly what the scenario calls for.

Thank you for the tips--I hadn't even thought about the risks of coat closets and curtains. I will definitely invest in a few metal pet combs. The next step? A Sinead 'do for us all...

Happy New Year -- and thanks again for the giggle.

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

Lisa, I've been admiring

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 10:44:55 -0600

Lisa, I've been admiring your haircut without realizing the reason for it. . . Eeeeeeeek!

As a child, I was a Girl Scout and a frequent guest and host of sleepovers. You know the sleepover connection, but what a lot of people don't think about is when you send your kinds to camp, they're sharing riding helmets and fencing helmets and and and. . . My Girl Scout troop used to go to a ranch called "Lazy J" that we renamed "Licey J" after 20 of us came back with lice. Yay.

I had lice ELEVEN times before high school. (I also once caught fleas from my sister, who had let our kitten sleep in her hair.) My poor mother!

Anyway, some tips on avoiding lice: Have your kids hang their jackets and backpacks on the backs of their desk chairs instead of in a common coat closet. No sleepovers unless everyone's been checked for lice. Beware tall bus and airplane seats. Check your kids' hair frequently, and act at the first sign of infestation. Request that the school nurse, if there is one, check all kids' hair regularly. When I was in elementary school, the nurse came directly to the classroom a few times a year and used a pair of tongue depressors (a fresh pair for each kid's head) to plow through our locks.

When the inevitable childhood infestation happens, use a metal pet flea comb--they're a PITA (and painful!) but the best at removing lice eggs. Be sure to wash curtains, too, especially in bedrooms. Don't forget to launder the bedskirts, any pet linens, tote bags, and backpacks. Quarantine plush and fabric toys in plastic bags in the garage for at least a month, and launder those that can be washed.

I don't know what the situation is like today, but when I was a kid, the OTC lice shampoos didn't work particularly well. We used a prescription kind called Kwell--we probably had a standing prescription at the local pharmacy.

Ah, the memories. . . As I'm about to put my son in daycare a few times a week, I guess I should stock up on supplies.

Good luck avoiding future infestations!

Leslie

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Research and Academia
Proprietor, The Clutter Museum

Melaleuca is teatree oil

Donasarah — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 14:08:50 -0600

God is Love http://newfreshcreatedjustforyou.blogspot.com/
If anyone wants to get a membership with a teatree oil company to use shampoos on a constant basis and launder liquid with the teatree oil in it for prevention, Just contact me with teatree oil in the subject line..Very glad to help you all out.Bless your dear hearts.

Chiggers

SarahPlainandTall — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 15:47:17 -0600

This was a great blog entry- your haircut looks beautiful! I remember an angry letter in the local paper from a mom whose child shared a locker with another. Apparently she was not told about the other child's lice because it was a "privacy issue" she was furious and her letter was such a ballsy move in our small town community- to say- YES OUR FAMILY HAS LICE and we got it because the school is hiding important public health information from us in the name of "privacy" What the heck!?

Kristine- Are you sure they are chiggers? Usually that's a summertime thing... and I've never heard of chiggers being catchy from person to person/ dog to person... only grass to person. A chigger seems to be a part of the local lore of the midwest- and I had never heard of them till I was preparing to move here. I was arranging to ship a horse to Kentucky to a boarding farm. I had not yet met the owner, but on the telephone she told me her horse had recently picked up some "Turkey Mites" in Missouri and it had caused his legs to swell. When I didn't know what a turkey mite was, she told me they were like Chiggers. I sure felt like a city girl to confess that I didn't know what a chigger was either.

Here is what I *think* I know about them... a chigger is a microscopic little larvae that burrows under your skin and itches like the dickens. They prefer to go to the hottest tightest places on your body- mainly- under your watch band, under your belt, under your underwear elastic. I don't know how they get into your skin- if they are live when they got on you or if they are an egg which hatches- but they say that the worst times of day to pick them up are the hours of dewey grass in the AM and PM. Hay farmers will attest to this. It seems very much linked to grass.

There is a creme called "Chigger-rid" that works all right to kill itch (I think it kills any itch. The favorite remedy though is just a thick dot of clear nail polish on the skin - allegedly to deprive the bug of air and it will die. Ugh... dead microscopic bug under your skin... that's the stuff obsessive compulsions are made of!

I think if your pup has something mysteriously itchy going on that it would be best to just go to the vet and get a skin scraping done- because it could be some sort of mange mite and that's no fun.

The Front Porch Swing

lice + other mites

kristine — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 08:54:33 -0600

Does anyone have a good link to information about lice and mites? I've searched online and read all that is available, and I still feel a bit ill-informed, in particular with Chiggers. Yes, chiggers. We have a chiggers problem with our puppies and now me.

Thanks.

GrenadeFishing.com

About Lice

Shelley2006 — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 00:27:54 -0600

I know, I probably should have taken the time to check all of the comments to see if any one mentioned this, but it's late, and I wanted to get this in before I fall asleep at the keyboard:)!! Last year my children came home with lice. I panicked! I freaked! I blamed every child that they had played with in the last 30 days. Once I gained some minute control over my emotions, we went shopping at Wal-Mart. I bought the usual (and not so reliable anymore) lice shampoo and combs. Did all the washing, all the vacuuming, all the praying, and all the nervous breakdown moderus operandi, lol. I did some research online and found the Lice RobiComb. It was available at Wal-Mart. It cost about $25.00, uses 1 AA battery and is a God Send. The kids didn't like it much because it pulls a little and if you get too close to their ears it's a little irritating, but in about 2 weeks, the lice was gone! I don't mean to sound like a commercial for RobiCombs but ladies this thing is AWESOME!

well out here in the part of

suemamma — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 08:12:15 -0600

well out here in the part of India that I live, there is a very good oil which gets rid of lice and keeps out fresh infestations. For nits, if you wait a week and then reapply the oil, it cleans out your head completely. It's some sort of Ayurvedic preparation. Incidentally, I thought head lice only existed in warm humid climates! Wish I could send out some oil for all of you there.

Egads... the horrible memories...

Valbee — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:18:59 -0600

I never had it when I was a kid, but I vividly recall when my boys were in kindergarten, there was an outbreak going on at their school. Some of the mothers in our neighborhood were just horrible to the couple of kids that got it. One of them was checking the head of another child at the bus stop. That child went home and told his mother and all hell broke loose, threatened lawsuits for touching the kid... oh my, it was ugly.

(This is the single largest reason why I wish there had been mommybloggers when my kids were small - because everyone around me was INSANE!)

But our only infestation with lice was several years later. My boys and I were living about 100 miles from home for the first time in our lives and they were frequently heading back to my sister's house on weekends. They got it from my nieces and gave it to me. We weren't positive what it was until my sister called me at work and confirmed it. And this is the best part: I went into my supervisor's office and told her I needed to go home and why. She made me use vacation time because I wasn't "sick."

I'm sorry to say that I was tempted to walk across the room and rub my head up against hers. Sick, no. Contagious? Hell, yes.

We actually didn't have a difficult time getting rid of it, maybe because they weren't continually exposed to where it was coming from. But I did shave their heads and cut about six inches of my own hair.

I Think About

carpets?

Mistress Of The Dorkness — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:11:18 -0600

holy cow. you just don't picture carpets in schools and things. am happy to have wooden floors to avoid that sort of thing.
~clucks tongue at cost cutting~ Hope they get it under control for the sake of all those poor kids and parents.

Melanie Perry
*not all who wander are lost*
Mistress of the Dorkness