House Guests

So it's always fun when a blog post generates comments, but when a post generates phone calls....!!  Wow!  The announcement of a foreign exchange student actually ranked a few phone calls!  Sweet!

When we decided to buy this big ol' house, one of the things we looked forward to doing was hosting an exchange student.  Because what better way to share the world with our kids than bringing it to our dinner table?  Sure beats traveling internationally with small children.  We have the space to share and just hope we are good representatives of our culture--both temporal and eternal.

We have been complete novices through this process and are learning as we go (like all parenting).  We chose an exchange agency because we had a friend of a friend who was a local advocate.  We chose our student because she is the oldest of several children in her home and we thought she would be comfortable in our chaos.  Other than that, it was a stab in the dark, and we couldn't be more pleased.

You'll be hearing more about H, our exchange student.  She'll be part of our family through the end of January-ish.  She's from northern Germany and is doing great with her English.  We are really impressed!  She'll turn 16 while she's here.  She arrived Thursday night after more than 24-hours en route.  We had great plans for the weekend, including taking a pic of her to introduce her to my huge readership, as well to show her around and maybe take in a local festival, but....

Friday morning we realized we had even more house guests than we thought.  I made the gruesome discovery that A and C had lice!  I wanted to crawl into the fetal position and deny my own existence for the next 48 hours.  Alas, that was not an option.  Our plans went down the drain and I began the overwhelming task ahead of me.

I started with a trip to the pharmacy for requisite tools.  Then, I made my first-ever trip through the Starbucks drive-thru for my own self-medication.  Chai latte has become my drug of choice and it helped me through the morning.  When I got home, I took each girl to the backyard and lopped off as much hair as I was comfortable with.  They both have decent little bobs now.  Then, I used that tiny little comb to go through A's thick, thick hair.  It took over an hour and a half.  C's was not so bad because her hair is so fine.

Then I gave the Cetaphil solution a try.  It was mid-afternoon by the time they were both "treated."  Next we bagged up all the stuffed animals, extra pillows and blankets.  I vacuumed, sterilized, and laundered for the rest of the day.  J came to the rescue by working from home and keeping Z out of the way.  So far, Z, J and I have been spared.  But just thinking about it makes my head light up with imaginary itches.

I'm going to say the Cetaphil trick was not particularly effective for A.  C seemed clear this morning, but A was still just as bad.  My own particular brand of torture is a contagious condition that keeps your children quarantined but at perfectly good energy levels, then re-occurs at weekly intervals for up to a month.  Yippy skippy.  Add to the equation one six-year-old with incredibly thick hair, a sensitive scalp, and a tendency to make mountains out of mole hills.  SuperMommy kryptonite trifecta!

J wanted to nail down where we had picked it up, but I knew that was futile.  Our best guess is the headphones at the library computer station.  A spent about 15 minutes trying the computer game in the kids' section.  C tried it too, but the headphones kept slipping off her head, so she didn't stay as long.  It could have been anywhere, honestly; we just don't know.  But you can rest assured, we will not ever use those headphones again.

I am so indebted to my sis-in-law, CA, who came to the rescue and whisked H away for a teenage girl shopping trip, dinner, and youth group study on Friday.  Then she came again tonight to take H to her first-ever baseball game.  Thank you, CA and R!!  You salvaged this weekend with flying colors!

A and C will stay home from church with me tomorrow and we will attempt to salvage Friday's schoolwork without Z in the mix.  Monday is a big day as we register H for high school and get a crash course in the public high school education system.

Enough rambling.  Stay tuned.  Our family motto really is "never a dull moment" and we strive to deliver.