Monday, September 5, 2011

10 out of 10 Ants Agree: Spit Happens

Baby girl woke up at 8:30am, right on time for her morning feeding.

(Well...technically mid-morning, as her morning started at 5:30, but since she went back to sleep until 8:30, we'll say this is her morning feeding.)

She needed a diaper change prior to eating.

*Note: ALWAYS change a baby's diaper before feeding them even if it only barely needs it.  The crying in the middle of the night for a few moments (as you change her and delay her meal) is MUCH better than the diaper becoming over-saturated during the nursing process at which point which baby, with abundantly overflowing diaper, is cuddled up next to you.  (I'm not saying I know from repeated experience.  Really.  I'm just saying it may be a good idea.  That's all.  Hypothetically.)

Ok, I promise I'm getting to the real reason for the post soon, but I need to explain something else first.

You see, some wonderful, kind, sweet, precious friends have given us LOTS of clothes (and bibs) for Little Bit.

This is fantastic, because she goes through a rather ghastly number of clothes and burp cloths on a daily basis due to her spit-up tendencies.  I mean, seriously, the child is like a bulimic volcano.  Whatever goes in just keeps pouring back out nice and slowly in a creamy, lava soup ALL DAY LONG.  As a result, I have to do laundry for her every two days at least, or we run out of the 20 burp cloths we have.  Please try not to be jealous.  Please.  Try.  And stop laughing, too.

Anyway, because I always have so much baby laundry to put away in the first place, I just got around to washing two HUGE loads of the new clothes last week (baby clothes are small, so a huge load is right around 250 items, give or take).  I still had not begun to sort or put them away, although my sweet, sweet mother in law tried to get me started.  Thanks Suegra!  (That's Spanish for most amazing M-I-L ever!)

Speaking of which, you may want to know:  Hubby's parents arrived last week!  We are super-glad they're here!  Although, actually, at the moment, no one other than myself or Em are currently at the house, since Matt is at Dragon-Con, and his parents are visiting friends for the weekend.  Everyone comes back tonight, so as soon as I finish this post, I'm going to be cleaning like crazy so they can't prove I only sat around and ate brownies and bon-bons all weekend.

So...

I have three clean baskets of laundry and am currently keeping dirty laundry on the floor.  Ours is in our closet, and Em's is under her changing table.  Bad idea.

This morning, I was changing her diaper, and I looked down and saw ONE ant on the floor.

Now, for those of you who have missed the privilege of experiencing ants, suffice it to say, they never travel alone.  Never.  I looked around and didn't see any others, so I killed the one guy and went back to the diaper change.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw about 20 or so on the floor at the corner of the changing table.  As I kept one hand on the baby -

**NEVER, EVER leave a baby unattended (or without a hand on her) on a surface higher than the floor.  I may be dumb enough to not change a diaper before I feed her (or I may not - I'll not confess a thing...) but I would NEVER let go of my baby for some ants!

Anyway, keeping one hand on baby, I bent down, and lo and behold, this is what I saw:

It's an ant smorgasbord! (that means buffet)  :-(

I was so shocked, I almost let go of the baby.  (I didn't, though, no worries).  I did, however, decide that she did not need to eat as badly as the situation needed to be addressed.  So, without even re-buttoning her onesie, I put the poor thing back into her crib.  I knew she was upset, but I told her that one day I would explain everything when she could understand, and she would agree with me.

This was the look I got:
She did NOT agree with me.  (Mom!  Don't leave me!  I'm HUNGRY!!!!)

Sigh.  Oh well.  She forgave me when I finally fed her 15 minutes later, and when I killed the ant that was somehow crawling on her head.

After putting her down, I transferred the ant-infested cloth to a plastic trash can.  The other clothes were immediately dumped into my plastic laundry basked (after I emptied the clean clothes that were in it onto the guest bed), and I put them into the laundry, ants and all.  I ran it on the hottest, longest wash for good measure.

I took the ant-infested cloth...
in case you'd forgotten what it looked like...


...outside and shook it in the yard.

FYI, for those of you who don't have the pleasure of living in sunny, sandy Florida, our ants are everywhere, and they're mean.  Grass is simply a covering for ant hills.  Don't send your kids in the backyard barefoot.  Trust me.

Anyway, I took it outside and shook it, and the mean little buggers went flying everywhere, but they were still chomping, so the ones that landed on me (around 10) went on and transferred to their second course---me.  I was getting a little squirmy, but I went on and shook one more time (ugh), and then dumped that one into the laundry, too.

I vacuumed up the floor, fed the baby, killed the stray ant that had made it to her head, scratched some ant bites, and then went to check on the wash.

The water had killed all of the ants, but they were still in my washing machine.  So, as I transferred clothes to the dryer, I shook each item out until all of the ants had fallen off.  Then, I took a paper towel and wiped up the ant carcasses so that my washing machine is no longer a graveyard.

And that, my friends, is why I entitled this post Spit Happens.  'Cause it most definitely does.  And now, the ants know it.  We'll see if actually putting dirty laundry in a laundry basket (not the floor) will make a difference.  If not, I promise to let you know.

Oh, and remember how I really appreciate my husband?  Well, last night, I especially appreciated him even more as I set out the trash and the recycling in the scary dark of night.

This morning, I looked out to see if recycling had been picked up yet.  It hadn't.  Neither had the trash.  Today is Labor Day.  I braved the dark of night for nothing.  Dang it!



2 comments:

  1. :D hahahahahahahaI es lo primero que tengo para comentar.

    y lo segundo es: ¿Existe una opcion aqui que diga "I´m loving it or Follow"??? porque definitivamente la narracion de la historia y el humor de la misma, son definitivamente una de las cosas que hacen que seguro siga leyendo, riendo e imaginando todas tus aventuras en cada post :D I´ll stay tuned-

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  2. Ok, first of all - I'm sorry. I hate ants and after dealing with the fly massacre of 2011 in Emmett's room this summer, I can relate on a much smaller scale (flies don't tend to come back - or bite).

    Second, I had to change my children's diapers between sides when feeding in the middle of the night in order to be sure they'd be awake enough for the other side. And, yes, I've experienced the dampness on more than one occasion - I'd say there's no perfect way to change a baby ;) Or deal with their laundry - they're just messy. And that's, apparently, never going to change.

    Sad day ;)

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