Part IV...

I'm actually getting kind of used to hearing Cesar say "man ANOTHER mouse!" from downstairs in the kitchen at 5:00a.m. I'm currently at home waiting for Scott my friendly pest control man to arrive!

Trying to tell us something...

So between her friend Henry welcoming a baby sister this weekend (congrats Em & Matt!) and her teacher Miss Tahina about to go on maternity leave with her first child due August 4, Leila has become a bit fixated on women having babies in their tummies and has been announcing regularly that "I'm going to have a baby brother next year" (she decided upon the gender on her own!) And here she is as we got ready for school last Friday putting one of her babies in her tummy. I did not stage these shots in the least, they were all her doing.

And that baby would be called "Cat in the Hat Name." It's beyond me too! One recent day she started calling one baby by the name Abbie and one by the name Zoe. I asked her what this third baby was named and she looked around her room while she said "ummmm.." then focused on a Cat in the Hat stuffed animal and said "that baby is Cat in the Hat Name." And she continues to call the three by "Abbie, Zoe and Cat in the Hat Name."

Part III...

At what point does it become mousie genocide? Sorry PETA, but Cesar removed trapped mouse # 3 from the kitchen early this morning. We had just replaced the glue traps yesterday and this guy was apparently pretty hardy b/c, Cesar said he had literally devoured half the trap trying to free himself and was still thrashing about as he slipped it into a plastic bag. Again, apologies PETA, but I'm not thrilled about these house guests! I could hear them periodically scratching about under the stove the whole time I was up finishing Harry Potter Friday night, but I was engrossed enough to ignore their ruckus. And I did find the conclusion of the HP series to be just about perfect!

Rats of NIMH Part Deux

Yep. Second mouse trapped in as many days. Not at all amused. BIG. FAT. ICK.

The Girl

My daughter consumed an entire fillet of Mahi-Mahi last night. She's 27 months old. I'm quite sure that at just over 2 years old, if I was consuming any fish whatsoever it was of the breaded stick variety. Not that there's anything wrong with fish sticks - I often sneak them in and when she asks if she's eating chicken I just smile and nod. It is sooooo...nice to have her eat what we eat most nights though and to not have to be a short-order chef.

Home sweet home

You know how the swarms of flies in the original Amityville Horror were an early indication that the house was probably not the best place to raise a happy, healthy family? We've been feeling the space crush in our little rental for a loooong time, but I'm now beginning to feel Amityville levels of dread about being stuck there. Were it not for the prize location, I fear we'd be in abject misery. OK, I exaggerate a wee bit, but we may just need a little dose of paranormal activity to finally force ourselves into finding a more suitable dwelling and the means to afford a more suitable dwelling. In the past week alone, we have faced:

• Ants (they've been on the kitchen counters and cabinets for weeks now - they are bionic - the bait discs + cinnamon have no effect - now that their populations have thinned down a bit, I've just learned to live with them and work around them, but still, it's GROSS);


• A flooded kitchen sink;


• The ceiling light in our bedroom turning on automatically in the night repeatedly (4 times!) Sunday (perhaps that one is paranormal??); and


• A dying mouse - scratch that - Rat. Well, it could have been a mouse swollen full of poison pellets, but it definitely looked more Rats of NIMH than Mrs. F/Brisby! At least I thought it did in the 1 & 1/2 seconds I looked down upon it before fleeing the room screaming for Cesar.

There's only so much more I can take y'all!

Still a loooong way to go 'til February...

So I'm listening to a Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing for the nominee to be CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Administrator on my computer this morning (I'm only a wonk by trade!) Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) is going off about how dysfunctional an Agency is that actually encourages its contractors to hire a person to reboot their computers every 15 minutes to ensure that data is refreshed. And I'm thinking to myself "sheesh, that sounds like..." Then Roberts actually completes my thought and says "It's like that TV show - I don't watch it, but my kids do - Lost - where the inhabitants of an Island have to enter a code into a computer every 108 minutes to save the world." And my heart actually leaped just to hear my favorite show referenced from a U.S. Senate Committee hearing room. Yeah, I'm kinda pathetic! I take full ownership of that fact and I do intend to get this tee-shirt: