Neighborly Etiquette

It has been raining here in NJ for about a month. We've had 6 inches of rain, and the weather folks are saying it could be a record month. Unfortunately for us, a month of rain = mosquitos the size of your head. We've made sure to empty T's kiddie pool and water table after each deluge to keep the backyard as mosquito free as possible.

Our neighbor? Not so much. Last summer she installed a giant inflatable pool. It's about 3 feet deep and is one designed to be taken down each winter. She didn't. The pool cover has since sunk a good 8 inches into the pool and is covered in what I can politely call fetid brown mosquito-orgy liquid. She doesn't use her backyard much, but everytime we go outside, T and I end up with big mosquito bites. My solution is to start chucking those pool chlorine tabs over the fence and into the mess. Ry thinks we ought to discuss with our neighbor. What would you do? I never see her, so to have a conversation, I would have to knock on the door. How, exactly, does one begin this conversation? I'm still rooting for chlorine tabs ....

Old McDonald: Chicken Farmer

J&T, Singing: Old McDonald had a farm. EIEIO. And on that farm there was a ....

T: Chicken!

J&T: EIEIO. With a cluck cluck here, and a cluck cluck there, here a cluck, there a cluck, everywhere a cluck cluck. Old McDonald had a farm. EIEIO. And on that farm there was a ...

T: Chicken!

J: Horse, EIEIO

J&T: With a .... EIEIO. And on that farm there was a ...

T: Chicken!

J: Cow, EIEIO. With a

T: Chicken!

J: Moo moo here and a

T: Chicken!

J: Moo moo there, EIEIO.

T: The END!

Baby N'in It

T: Baby in Mommy?

J: Yes, the baby is in Mommy's tummy.

T: Baby in T?

J: No, no babies in T. Only Mommy.

T: Baby in Daddy?

J: No, no baby in Daddy. The baby is only in Mommy.

T: Baby in there! (Points to my belly).

J: Yep, baby in there!

T: OK

20 weeks, 1 day

Paging Dr. Pavlov

Today T was outside, taking his Cozy Coupe out errand running. First he went to the Bagel Store, where he got he and I a bagel (Daddy got two). Then, he decided to go the Target. "T, what will you get at Target?" I asked. He looked up at me with a big grin on his face and said "A pretzel! Yum!" Perhaps I need to reevaulate snacktime at Target.

Partial Redo

You may remember that this is what our bathroom used to look like. It's perfectly serviceable, but the vanity was pretty cheap and starting to buckle/come apart at its cheap little edges. We knew a new vanity was on the list in the next year or 18 months, but came across this terrific little deal.

Eh, voila! Isn't it perty? We replaced the vanity, painted and hung a new shower curtain. We still have some mudding and painting to do on the ceiling since it started peeling off when Ry attempted to smooth and patch.

We also bought a new shower head and water thingie for the tub, but when we take down the tub surround (which I hate) we'll retile. That is a project for another day. Still on our shorter term list is a new medicine cabinet and light. The current cheap pair look even cheaper now that we have a real, grown up vanity and sink. Still, it looks better, no?

Happy Friday!

18 weeks, 2 days

Last weekend.

More happenings

1. I just took what was, perhaps, the most difficult exam of my (recent) college career. I have to wait until Friday to see if I stuck the landing. There were more than 1000 data points to memorize for this test. Ug.

2. I made pesto with basil from our garden last night. It was good. It's the first of the garden fodder for the year. I'm actively soliciting recipes involving basil, tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini to use the summer bounty.

3. Tucker's memory is getting scary good. He won a fish (stuffed animal) at Sesame Place last weekend. He carried it around for the entire next day. When Ry dropped him at school, he had a hard time convincing him that fish had to stay in the car. Then, Ry left the state. This morning, T asked for the fish. I had to tell him more than once that Daddy was bringing it home tonight and that fish would soon be his again.

4. T has a stuffed dino that we made at Disney in October. It's been one of his favorite toys. When it came time to name it, we let T type whatever he wanted into the computer. What we ended up with was "Ib." And Ib he's been until recently, when T has started calling him "Hibby." I think this is the first animal T has named independently. Hibby has also become part of the night time menagerie and must make the trek upstairs every night.

5. My sister is in Argentina. My mom is in Ireland. I'm in New Jersey. :(

6. We went into Home Depot this weekend expecting to pick up a few items for around the house. We ended up buying a vanity, marble top and vessel sink. The next day (different Home Depot) we bought a shower head and temp controller thingie. Wrap cost: $125. I love clearance. And I luuuurve my new vanity. We had to buy the faucet seperately and it ended up costing as much as everything else combined. I'm not sure when we'll get around to the project, but it's also going to involve a new coat of paint on ceiling and walls and baseboard behind the existing vanity.

7. My class is over in 2 weeks! I have 3 more exams before it's done. Wash your hands.

They're everywhere!

As most of you knew, there are over 100,000,000 microbes on your average kitchen sponge. The range is more like 15,000,000 to 200,000,000, but either way, ew. We also tested water from bagged lettuce (around 100,000 microbes) and a gram of raw, ground turkey (around 1,000). The day we did this experiment, I came home and cleaned my kitchen like I've never cleaned before.

There are a couple of things you can do to keep the microbe count down, like wash your sponge in the dishwasher or microwave it in a bowl of water for a couple of minutes. Since we all aren't sick all the time, it's pretty obvious that most of the microbes aren't pathogenic. Something like 75% of raw poultry in supermarkets is contaminated with camphlyobacter (causes food poisoning) and about 25% is contaminated with salmonella. If you use your sponge to clean up after preparing raw meat, make sure to decontaminate your sponge, or you could be spreading all around your kitchen the next time you wipe your table.

Happy cleaning!

And more cuteness

Can of soup + foot = ow

We are now 4 days in. My foot is fugly. Here's the lesson I learned: never let your toddler build can towers in a shopping cart.

Toddler cuteness

I realize I haven't posted T pictures in a while, so here you go, our last few weeks in pictures:T in his pool in the backyard. I don't bother putting the swim shorts on him at home, because look how cute he is the in swim diaper!
T and our friend's son. They were riding the skateboard at his dad's welcome home from Iraq party.
Obsessed with Dad's shoes lately.
Waiting in line at Sesame Place. He's actually getting really good with the "taking turns" concept.

Once upon a time ...

Happenings

• T dropped a can of soup on my big toe from the shopping cart.  It hurt a lot and bled profusely.  As I'm limping around the store, vainly trying to finish my shopping while keeping the toe from bleeding all over the floor, T kept saying, "Owie Mommy. Feel better now?"  Yes babe, I'm feeling better.  Today it is promising to become a lovely violet color.
• My check engine soon light came on this week (just in time to have the car inspected!)  Ry took it to an autoparts store to read the code on the light to be told that it was a "manufacturer specific" code that they had never seen before.  Undaunted, my hubby scoured the internets to learn how to count the flashes the code made to figure out what it meant.  Last night, he took some time in the car to do just that ... and killed the car battery.  We don't own jumper cables.  Enter one late night trip to Lowes and a battery-jump start thingie and my car is alive and well (with no check engine soon light!).

Fun Things I'm Learning in Micro

1. I suck at preparing T-smear petri plates.  I gouged every one of mine.

2. I'm pretty good with a stain and a microscope.

3. Staph is actually really pretty.  It looks like lots of teeny tiny purple dots.

4. There are a lot of things that cause diarrhea.

5. I never want to be immunocompromised.  There is a fungus that will eat your face off if not caught and treated.  It's found everywhere, but you won't get it unless you're immunocompromised.

6. Fungi is a fun word to say.  Fungi fungi fungi.

7. Pinworms crawl out of your butt at night to lay their eggs. 

8. Wash your hands, there are microbes everywhere!

16 weeks, 5 days

No puking today.