Bugs, bugs and more bugs

Mosquitos have become the bane of my existence.  Not that I was ever truly enamored with them, but since they have decided that Linc's three year old flesh makes the best banquet hall, I find myself thinking of numerous ways to ward them off.  We have tried everything!  From essential oils and long sleeve/pants to dryer sheets and commercial bug sprays.

Of course Linc's age was an initial limitation to the commercial products.  We heard "deet free" from a very young age and, seeing the mosquitos did not appear to understand that our baby was OFF LIMITS, we searched out alternatives for bug spray.  Our search took us some weird places.  We were told by a few people that dryer sheets in belt loops would keep them away - didn't work.  We were also informed that eucalyptus and clove essential oils were excellent at warding off mosquitos - not in our case.   So now that we have dryer sheets sticking out of our pockets, as well as tied into our hair, and we smell like we bathed in essential oils we moved on to the commercial deet free products.  I was so excited - All Terrain KIDS Herbal Armor - it seems to work!!  It smells wonderful, Linc doesn't mind getting sprayed with it, life is grand - we can go outside again!!  That lasted for about 4 months, then it was like the mosquitos became attracted to the spray.

Was perfect, until it wasn't

By this time Linc was no longer just getting giant welts from mosquito bites, he was starting to swell.  The swelling initially would take a day to appear and would disappear in about the same time.  Now it takes about 5 minutes for Linc to swell and it takes at least 48 hours for the swelling to go down (that is with the help of prednisone normally).  Around the time the swelling started appearing the "no deet" mantra from the pediatrician's office started disappearing.  They started suggesting "low deet" options, Off: Family Care, as long as we ENSURED that Linc would be washed down every night.  So we switched - it was better.

Our armor against the hungry bugs now goes something like this - If we are in our own yard prior to 3pm then he uses the low deet, after 3 pm we switch to a 25% concentration of deet.  When we are in the woods, we don't even start off with the low we just slather on the 25%.  What else can we do? I know there is no (reasonable) way to make ABSOLUTELY certain that Linc will not be bit, but I will settle for something that is safe for him to use daily and gives reasonable protection. We do avoid dusk and nights outside, but the bugs seem to find him at the weirdest times of the day - 11am, 2:30pm, 7am on the way into school - and in places that are not necessarily "breeding grounds".  I know this is a long and fairly boring entry, but as he got bit, yet again, this morning on the way into school I figured I would appeal to the masses for information.  What do you do?  What do you use?  Do you have any suggestions?

This one got his ear -
it took three days for the swelling to go down

Bite to the temple -
don't like it when they are on his head