Parents rite of passage

I have had the . . . err . . . joy . . . of my kids having Head Lice this past weekend. I remember the joys of horseback riding lessons and softball lessons that brought this joy to my house at a young age. Now that joy has arrived at my house yet again. Emma was scratching her head saturday eve and I joked with Tanya to check her for lice. Tanya did and said "umm Marti" I looked at her and said "NOT funny." We went to the bathroom to look and sure enough there were the little buggies. I saw a couple moving. So off to wal-mart I went to grab all the treatment stuff I could. I got home and by then Tan said she'd seen only one in Garretts head. So being the life saver and awesome sister she is, she stayed with us and treated emma and garrett's hair while I began the huge long process of stripping the house of everything either of them could have laid their heads on. I stripped the beds, bagged up all the pillows, dress up, toy couches, stuffed toys that couldn't be washed. Then began the loooooong process of washing everything in hot water and drying it all. While the laundry was going I went and sprayed down the beds, the carpet, the couches. Then put Cat lice carpet powder on the floors, waited 30 minutes, then vaccumed it up. As all this was going on I went back up to help pick out Garrett's hair. Fr some reason it puled his hair much more than emma's. He was screaming "stop mommy. why you doing that?" I was on the verge of tears. Then when we had the hair done and I was still working on the house, Tan looked at the clock and realized we hadn't fed the kids yet. So I made dinner. After dinner, I went up to start phase two of the hair while Tan cleaned up the dinner mess. (Thanks BTW) Then Tan finished up phase two of the hair picking while I got the downstairs ready for our sleep out. The kids slept on the pull out bed and I slept in the recliner. So far today I have done more laundry than I'd like to remember, re-sprayed the beds and carpets, and have begun reassembling everything that was already washed. Ah the joys of parenthood! . . . . Hopefully the chicken pox will wait a while longer to come to our house! And hopefully it will be nice enough to come on a weekend when Matt's home and not at a retreat! I don't know how much Aunt Tanya can stand! :)