We got lice! Yes, it's true. As near as we can figure it, Emma picked up a louse or two passing around her funky hat at Field Day near the end of her school year. Because I had hurt my hand, I couldn't do as much with her hair as usual, so the lice had plenty of time to breed MORE lice ... and then we took them to Texas before discovering them! Shortly after the first louse crawled off her scalp, Em was begging us to shave her head. Turned out that, while she had a veritable louse metropolis on her head, Grace and Kate had just a few nits — which is pretty disgusting as it is! We shampooed and nit-combed for hours, and then we applied the Cetaphil treatment, in which you massage a whole bottle of Cetaphil liquid soap into the kid's head, then squeeze out the excess, then blow-dry. In these first three pics, Em and Kate's hair is DRY. It's just shiny and rubbery from being coated with Cetaphil. The idea is to suffocate the lice, and it worked great; we didn't have any recurrences. But still: having lice was horrible. At least no one else got them but the Kratzes, although my poor mom spent a ton of quarters washing nearly everything in her house at the Stafford Wash-a-Teria and, back at home, Greg basically bagged up the entire house and had recurring louse-anxiety attacks.
Bearing up well under the rubbery head. At least the stuff washed right out and left a nice clean smell when we were done! Thanks to Jen for suggesting this treatment, after getting advice from a friend who's a hair stylist.
To begin our lice recovery efforts, we (of course) went shopping! The kids are wearing new outfits from JC Penney, which has surprisingly good stuff for surprisingly low prices! I hadn't been in there for years, but I think I'll be going back. Who would've thought? I, myself, got a couple pairs of new shoes at Macy's. They were having a great sale, so I got these great brown wedges, and Mom treated me to some super-pointy-toed black pumps that look like they lace up. They're witchy and elegant and cool and I wore them for the first time last week.
Above and below, Max made himself a "bed" with some rugs on my mom's kitchen floor ... and then really fell asleep that way! Only on my mom's floor (well, on Marilyn's, too) would this not horrify me.
Near the end of our time in Texas, we had a girl's day out with all the girl grandkids, Mom and me. We went to a candy store, a gift store and Charming Charlie's, a super-cool accessories store, and here we're waiting for our lunch at Jimmy John's. Aren't they all a bunch of beauties?
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