A family that delouses together stays together. Meg literally just high fived me because despite the crisis’ of the day we still managed to get the kids fed, bathed, storied, sang, and tucked IN addition to doing 3 loads of laundry (all the linens), delousing treatments x 4, and spend quality time together. What a fairy tale…right? I mean what else is there left for me to write. I think you get how this night may have been a nightmare.

Rewind to the beginning of the day when I took my 8 year old to daycare with her 2 and 3 year old siblings. It turns out that when school is out so is after care. I found this our last Thursday at 5pm. In a panic, I negotiated (in what I thought was a pinterest worthy idea) that K (she is the 8 year old) could help H (the baby boy) get comfortable at school. For the record, I am also aware of how this might backfire and make things harder for him. We get to choose our thoughts, I chose the most self serving for sure.

Well it was a disaster, due to some miscommunication in the daycare and animosity (aka concerned folks) it was reiterated that this accommodation for K was only for this week. I was grateful this generosity was extended. But also felt I felt awful it didn’t go better for H; and that K felt like she was in trouble for being there (her words…..cut straight to the heart). After a good amount of repair she is looking forward to tomorrow. An aside: lets to our best to keep adult conversations and comments to adult ears, little ears hear everything and they have sensitive souls.

I cried 4 times today.

I vacillate between feeling super encouraged/supported AND terrified that I am being judged for all the things I am screwing up so far. Thats my stuff; no one is purposefully contributing to my self-deprecation. Unless you are doing it on purpose and in that case, you should stop (be kind, karma is a bitch).

Then Anna left. She was here for approximately 48 hours but she is one of those friends that we connect with instantly no matter how much time has passed. The kids LOVED her. More about her trip in my less bitchy post. (Yes, there will be 2 tonight…..get excited).

Then my client who I scheduled on my day off, no showed.

Then during dinner, K was talking about her hair itching or something. After some investigation and googling; while totally down playing. We decided it was lice and we should treat. (this is where I fear some kind of judgement). It was very reminiscent of my childhood, self-disclosure I totally remember being treated for lice. And despite all the psychoeducation I did about lice this evening there is still some stigma attached that is degrading. We did our best to keep it upbeat and remind everyone that this wasn’t there fault. K admitted her head was itchy the day she got to our house but she was afraid to tell us because we might get mad at her.

Sigh.

65 dollas later (wrap it up and call it a Christmas present), 3 hours I can never get back, and all the laundry and we are (hopefully) lice free. I know the drill, recheck in a few days. But I swanny, the next treatment I will be paying someone else to do. For extra prevention Meg and I treated ourselves….prevention, hopefully.

Now let me make some lemonade out of these lemons. While I was treating M (my crazy 3 year old gal) we were watching Daniel Tiger, the greatest show. Netflix the whole series! You will relive your childhood (#itsabeautifuldayintheneighborhood). H (baby boy) fell right to sleep. Alone (while with meg and without his siblings)…that is a milestone for sure. While we were working on K’s hair we did some great talking. Learned ALOT. We received some cool coloring/activities books from FosterClub. You should absolutely check out there website (here). My teammate from college Jessica Gibson works for this organization and they developed these books for kids to understand foster care and other resources to navigate the system. It facilitated some great conversation. So in the end, there was some very needed quality one on one time, we listened to her heart and felt the connection grow stronger.

Another piece of good news: Dogs can’t get lice.