Lice and Mice but Some things Nice

Oh what a week. It included:

1. Having a slight scare that Eli might have lice (but later figured out that it was white glue in his hair from preschool). No lice here. Thank you Mary for being so willing to come check his hair for me since I am still not exactly sure what it looks like…

2. Having a MAJOR scare when I was cleaning out one of our basement storage rooms. Charlie was napping and Eli was playing in the playroom area, so I decided to go through that room and get it organized. There had been a funny smell coming out of that room for a couple of weeks, but we hadn’t figured out what was causing it.

WELL. When I was moving some of our coolers around, I randomly peeked in one of the soft case coolers… not expecting to see anything, but was shocked to find a tiny, dead MOUSE.

That’s right – A MOUSE. IN MY HOUSE. And the smell?? OH the smell. I get the shivers just thinking about it.

I started screaming. And jumping up and down because it was so disgusting and I couldn’t stand it. Eli was completely oblivious that I was upset, and kind of looked at me like, why are you yelling? But he kept on playing with his toys. I ran upstairs, still screaming like a crazy person. I think I screamed for a good five minutes. Maybe longer. It was loud enough to wake up poor Charlie, who was tired and sad the rest of the day because I disrupted his nap. I screamed so long that I could barely talk at the end of the day, my voice was so hoarse.

That night, Ben threw the cooler with the dead mouse away. The next day when I threw something in the trash, I saw the cooler and almost screamed again. YUCK YUCK YUCK.

Don’t worry, there will be no pictures of the mouse on my blog. And I am ordering the Rat Zapper to either catch any remaining, hiding mice or to give me the peace of mind that the dead mouse was some random fluke. I haven’t seen any signs of mice, but it still doesn’t make me feel like going down into the basement at night when it’s dark. NO THANK YOU! I’ve also ordered the Bug Fighter Plus Insect & Rodent Repeller. Stay away, pesky mice… you are not welcome here.

3.  On a NICER note, we ate breakfast for dinner at Walker Brother’s on Friday night, and later I attended the Chicago Craft Social event. It was fun! I wasn’t super productive, but I did freezer paper stenciling for an Eli shirt and a Charlie shirt. It was fun to learn how that worked. I also did an image transfer of a photo taken of Eli – I transferred it onto watercolor paper and thought the end result was cool. Of course I don’t have photos of either item to show you. But it was nice to get out and be around lots of creative people!

4. And as always, I took lots of pictures. This week, I spent most of the time taking pictures of Charlie:

OH he is my kissable, sweet little love. Those cheeks are delicious.

And other times, he is the funny-toothed growling baby. Ben calls Charlie the “Charlie-soar” because of his funny sounds. The fourth tooth has yet to come through the gums… any day now, tooth...

What is sweeter than a smiling, happy little boy? Today at church he was very tired and kept snuggling up to me, sucking his thumb, and playing with my hair. Charlie, you are such a love.

My favorite though is after he’s done nursing and his cheeks are rosy and warm from being close to me. Yes, I’m still nursing my 9-month-old and will probably do that until he’s about one, just like I did with Eli. I’m glad he can get the antibodies during this nasty cold/flu season and hope he’ll stay relatively healthy this winter. If you’re a formula fan, that’s totally fine too! I firmly believe everyone does what’s best for them, and either option is great.

And now a few pictures of Eli – here he is at the park for playgroup, hanging out with his friend Ava, her dad Keenan, and her aunt Jesica. It was a pretty crisp (but sunny) day, and the wind was making his eyes water so he looked like he was crying.

Charlie had fun pushing the push-toy around the perimeter of the park. This toy helps a ton because he is still in the phase of taking one or two steps and then falling into my arms or plopping down and crawling. But at the park, it’s nice to have things he can do that keep him off the ground.

But that never lasts! Here’s Charlie with his friend Oliver, who is a few months younger but about the same size or maybe bigger? They had fun staring at each other in the sand.

I probably have mentioned this before, but Keenan is Hawaiian and takes his ukelele into the nursery each week to sing with the toddlers - it is SUCH a highlight for those kids! I think he has reached celebrity-status with Eli.

Oh Charlie. Sucking that darn thumb. I promise he doesn’t do it all the time, though it certainly seems like it based on my stories and pictures. I think it relaxes him when he’s teething…

But Eli’s guys are good teethers too (hopefully none of those parts will come loose) – I stay right by him when he’s chewing on one of these, just in case.

I don’t remember why Charlie was just in a onesie? It’s not exactly warm outside. I’m guessing I was changing his clothes and this was mid-clothing-change…?

Here’s Ben cutting Eli’s hair once again. It had been about six weeks since the last haircut and it was definitely time. My favorite quote from Eli during the haircut was, “The fur’s coming off!” Funny boy.

Though now Eli’s hair is VERY short. Ben reassures me it will grow. :) I know…

Yesterday we had this weird, fluke warm day where it was close to 70 degrees, which is SO rare for Chicago. We had fun playing at the park and enjoying short sleeves one last time. This next week looks like 40-degree temps and rain. Fun.

We stayed a little too long at the park though - Charlie was so exhausted on the way home. He went right to sleep after all of that fresh air.

And finally, Ben came home after his meetings in the morning and read books with the boys while I finished getting ready for church. Eli loves the book, A Fish Out of Water, so we read it often. I like the inscription on the inside, written in cursive -

“To Eli – Thank you for watching our fish. You are so awesome! Love Sasha and Oliver.” Eli likes to use the word “awesome” because of what they wrote. :)

Phew! I’m glad it’s a new week. Let’s hope there’s more nice than mice…