The Saga Continues

The attack of the mice is still on. Yesterday (Tuesday) I found several...SEVERAL droppings in our bedroom, my closet, Jason's closet, the living room, and all over Emma Grace's room that proved the mice were still very much alive and in our house. They (I assume there may be more than one) even chewed 3 balls off of the butterfly decorative pillow in EG's room that was on the floor. I tell you, this scares the mess out of me. I hate rodents. They gross me out. And furthermore, I wonder why in the heck they chose our house and the bedroom of all places for their escapades. There is not a stinch of food in these places; I suppose all the droppings I saw come from the D-CON I put out, which means they are having a hay-day munching away to their demise. Hopefully they will keel over outside of our house so the stink doesn't happen next week while we're on vacation!! I cannot for the life of me see how they can prance all over a 3 year old's bedroom in the middle of the night and she doesn't hear it. Jason reminded me that with the "wind tunnel" I have going in her room so she won't hear Jase crying (a floor fan and a humidifier) probably is the reason for that. :)

So I think I hear a moving noise in EG's closet yesterday morning about 10am. I proceed to get the biggest, heaviest golf club I can find and go rummaging in her closet taking everything out one at a time so I can whammy that sucker. We get to the end of the items and there is truly no mouse. I'm disappointed yet a little relieved that I didn't have to battle the mouse...it would not have been fun. The sit and spin went off one time and it alone made me yell! Emma Grace would not move off of the couch until I assured her that there was no mouse in her room. The cube trap is in my closet next to the d-con and has been since the night before with just a small piece of cheese smeared with peanut butter.

I tell you all of that background to say that this morning at 2:20am I hear Jase stirring, so I go potty as I usually do before the 30-40 min. long saga and I don't turn on the bathroom light (never do...somehow I function at night without a single light on), but I think I hear something in the bathroom with me. Shudder, shudder...I quickly head back to bed to wait for the real fussing indicating it's time to warm the bottle. At 3am I hear vigilant scratching; something's stuck and can't get out!!!! Could it be? YES, got another one in the cube!!!! I still think this one is the same mouse Jason dropped off at the pond and came back for round two! A picture is attached, so you see for yourself if you think they're "related".

This morning, Jason did put the mouse into a ziplock bag and bang the bag against the concrete.....DEAD as a doornail! Then he took it to work with him and put it in the dumpster in Columbia. No possible way for him to return this time. I hate to say it, but after I had put the trap out on the front porch this morning I really thought I heard more funny noises.....so the saga continues....I will persevere until all traces of mice are GONE.

This is NOT FUNNY

This is TRULY not funny...there are mouse droppings beside the D-Con I put in my closet just last night!! So now there is another intruder. Horror of all horrors....not one mouse, but two or three or an entire family!!! I cannot believe it! How in the world are they entering my house??? I will persist until I have killed the entire mouse population. No more Mrs. Nice Woman...no more dropping them off at the pond. NOPE. This is WAR!! Heads will roll. More later once I have captured them all.

The Intruder

Yes, that’s right! We had an intruder that rudely disrupted our lives for 2 nights now and one day as I was home all day Friday with 2 little ones fearful of what he might do. This is no 2- legged intruder, however. I have come to know that he is one talented and annoying little MOUSE! I thought perhaps it was a rat instead of a mouse, but have come to realize he was just a field mouse. I’ll just say that this mouse has led to us having 3 ½ hours of sleep Thursday night and about 5 hours of sleep last night. He was discovered about 1:15am on Thursday night as he was gnawing away at the door in Jason’s closet. At first Jason didn’t even believe what I was telling him. He kept on for a while insisting that I was hallucinating. I must tell the whole story for you all to appreciate how talented I say this mouse is.
Upon my insistence after crying, breathing hysterically, and generally very fearful, Jason turns the light on and we go on the hunt that would scare the bejebeerze out of me. We listen quietly….suspect his closet is where the noise is coming from…open the closet door….mouse jumps from the right side clear over to the left side!! Jason never saw it….I DID!! Keeps saying, “Are you sure you saw a mouse? I don’t believe you.” We’re both hot…why is it 76 in the house when we keep it on 71 at night? Is it just my nerves?? No, Jason is hot too. Something is not right with the AC….Jason goes to check it….clicks it on/off/on/off until it starts shooting out cooler air. It did this one night last week too. While he’s in the hall checking out the AC, this suspecting mouse decides it’s time to peek around the corner from inside the closet and see if he can sneak out. I scream, jump up to sit on the sink and raise my feet…..mouse runs to hide inside closet once again. Jason runs back in the bedroom and once again thinks I may be delusional. I insist there is a mouse in his closet!! We shut the door to the closet (there is carpet in part of our bathroom and his closet making it impossible for this mouse to sneak out under the door! Praise the Lord for this!! Saved us) and debate what to do. So I insist Jason needs to get out his clothes for Friday and KEEP THE DOOR SHUT so he doesn’t escape in the morning when he goes to get a shower. He does as I ask and we head back to bed to sleep. About 15 min. later, the mouse begins to gnaw at the door in an effort to break out. This is LOUD and I ask Jason, “So tell me you don’t hear THAT!?” He agrees and we think, well now what are we going to do? It’s 2:00 in the morning and no way to kill the mouse.

I find a mouse trap under the kitchen sink from when we used to rent at Juanita’s and we set it with an oh so small smidgen of cheese. We wait….we wait…nothing but MORE GNAWING on the door. We open the door and see that the cheese is gone and the trap is still set. LITTLE BOOGER! So now we think what to do…try again! This time with a little bigger piece of cheese. Well, he absconds with it as well without setting off the trap and begins to gnaw once again…this time it’s only 3am! At 3:20 we set the trap once more over by the place he’s gnawing so he HAS to step on the lever to get to the door he loves so much. Wait 15 more min. and hear more gnawing. Open door to find he’s moved the trap out of the way without setting it off. So now we set it one last time as we smear the cheese on the lever so he has to push harder to get the cheese licked off the lever. This does not work!! More gnawing…Jason heads to the couch at 3:40 and I hear the baby and begin warming the breast milk so he won’t wake Emma Grace up. I feed baby and pump more milk…now it’s 4:20am. Mouse is still upset and gnawing away, so I head to couch. Can’t sleep out there and Jase is still tossing and turning at 5:00am. Jason’s alarm goes off at 6:00am and get gets up to get a shower. Jason leaves for work at 6:45 and I hear the baby again at nearly 7am. There is no sleep for the weary!! Baby is up for good; why he’s had a wonderful night’s sleep! BAHH!!!

So I head to the closet to see what our little booger mouse has made of the closet….I find he has somehow managed to set off the snapping trap with a Clemson flip-flop and now made off once again with the smeared cheese. How smart is this rodent? There are also bits of the carpet now pulled up. I load up the children and head to Wal-mart to get a cube trap. We return speedily, set the cracker with peanut butter in the end of the cube and wait an hour and a half. I check the cube and he has managed to pull the cracker half-way out of the trap door without himself getting trapped inside. What in the world?!? How big IS this thing? He didn’t appear all that big when he jumped out at me. I reassemble the cracker and position the cube near the gnawed part of the door and hope he’ll go inside further to get a smaller piece. By Friday evening when Jason came home from work and my dad drove up from Charleston, he still was wreaking havoc on the closet. BEDTIME>>>>no mouse gotten yet. I cannot LIVE ONE MORE NIGHT like we had the previous night. We take our chances and hope that with both the snap trap and the cube he’ll be caught somehow. 2am comes and the little mouse begins his usual gnawing to try to escape just as he had the night before.

Jason goes to couch…I do too but cannot get comfortable and baby needs passy at 2am, 2:30am, and now both dad in the pool table room asleep and hubby beside me on other side of sectional are SNORING. Help Lord!!! I head to baby’s room to sleep on the twin bed in the nursery. Baby’s making too much noise and then needs feeding at 3:30am. I feed him, pump milk again, and head back in our bedroom at 4:20 to hopefully get some rest without any gnawing sounds. At 5am when I am nearly asleep I start to hear the noise again. No, Lord, you KNOW I need some rest. I think of things I can put up against the door so he cannot gnaw anymore. At 5:40 I get up and check out what kind of disarray the closet and clothes are in….I swing open the door and still hear the scratching…..COULD IT BE?!!!! The mouse is in the cube up on the dresser inside the closet and HE CAN’T GET OUT!!! PTL!!!! Wonder how long he was in that cube scratching? I take the cube outside on the front porch and notify Jason that the INTRUDER HAS been CAUGHT!!! CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES<>

We both head back into the bedroom for a couple more hours of sleep….oh wait…we have a 3 month old who wakes up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6:30am begging to be fed AGAIN. I get up so upset that Jason has had good sleep since 2am and I am about to fall over from sleepiness and kill our son. He must have sensed my anger and came in at 6:45 to help finish feeding the baby and let me get some rest. I slept until 9am!!!!! Thank you, Jason, for taking the baby and Emma Grace once she was up at 7:30am. What a blessing my husband gave me Sat. morning and what a blessing God gave us in catching the mouse. Yes, it was a mouse, not a rat. Although all signs would have pointed to one much bigger and smarter. Guess he just got too hungry and couldn’t resist that peanut butter cracker anymore. Hope we never have another intruder of that description!!! Maybe soon I will catch up on the sleep I so desperately need.

Sleep, where are you?

OH, sleep, where art thou?! Well, some of you who live nearby or have talked to me on the phone in the last 3 days know that Jase has some sort of cold and is snorting some. It affects his sleeping (coughing to try to get it out as it drains down his throat) and thus affects MY sleeping! He HATES for me to suction out his nose, and I remember all too well having to do the same thing for EG except that right along with the cold came ear infection after ear infection with her. How I am praying that his ears are made differently and that we won't have to undergo those dr. appts. and eventual tubes placed in the ears like we did EG nearly 3 years ago. We're at home instead of daycare now, so hopefully we can skip out on some of the germs that circulate. :) Please pray for us to get some LONG hours of sleep. Jase did shock us all and sleep until 6am this morning, so we are so thankful. I just have to get my body used to the fact that his sleeping is so erratic (2am one day and 6am the next) and not start freaking out at 3am heating up the bottle when I hear any sort of noise on the monitor.

Interesting!

I know it seems like I always have something new and exciting to post about Emma Grace and not much is mentioned about Jase. Well, to update everyone on our little man, Jase is doing so well. He's almost too good of a baby!! I hardly even know he's in the house; such a content, sweet little one. Jason's mom reminds me that is how Jason was as a baby! Jase is just cooing and talking up a storm as if to say, "Hey you guys, I'm here and it's my turn to talk!" He laughs out loud when tickled or we wave his hands quickly, and he smiles at EVERYTHING. I can walk in his room in the morning to see if he's awake and he's just smiling away at the teddy bear mobile hanging on his crib! What a cutie pie with that one dimple! (He got that from me!)

I do think he is intrigued by the TV, which I'm not proud to say is on at our house more than I care to tell you. I just don't give a bottle to a baby 6X a day in the sheer quiet and not fall asleep! And it keeps Emma Grace occupied for the few minutes I'm busy with the baby. At least we're watching the Sprout channel and the Noggin channel. Can't be that bad, can it? I mean, today we learned that a cheetah is the fastest animal there is and a snail the slowest. And we saw how the Wonder Pets did a little problem solving to help save a tree in a run down lot. I'm learning to listen to music or something else, but it's just easier to flick on the boob tube for 20 minutes and hear what the news says about the election, the 3 Hurricanes, etc. It's my only contact with the outside world as we don't get The State Newspaper except on weekends and I'm definitely not up for the 11 o'clock news!! But I am aware of its impact on at least our son and I do NOT want him to end up ADD like some of society's kids who are hooked on TV from birth. Usually Jase ends up watching EG as she plays babies or paints on her easel while the TV is just background noise. O.K., yes, it appears I am making excuses. Shame on me. I'll try to do better...honestly...we do read books sometimes with EG right beside me as I give Jase a bottle. But not 6X a day. OH well.

I do want to tell you that EG was doing her letters/numbers/tracing animals activity book that uses a dry erase marker today and she said, "Mom, do we have bears?" I asked her does she mean in South Carolina or at our house, or in general are there real bears? She said in SC. I told her that bears like to live where it's not so hot, so they generally live in colder places and in the mountains. I reminded her of when we went to Gatlinburg to visit my grandmother and she and Kemp (her only cousin) went over and sat on the fake black bear's back and we took pictures of them. I reminded her that was in the mountains and that, yes, there are bears in the mountains of TN. She next wanted to know if these bears lived out in the woods. I assured her they did (I think she was getting a little scared---she'll never want to go visit my grandmother Onspaugh again!). Then she just replied,
"Huhh....in-ter-es-ting!"