Death and Destruction in the Nursery

I believe having a relatively toxic-free environment for a newborn is somewhat important. That's one of the reasons why we had the nursery painted and the floors refinished in April so that hopefully all the off-gassing would be done by when ever we got around to procreating. I've been opting for organic things where possible, as long as they don't need to be hand washed by virgins in angel's tears or some such nonsense. So far, so good, right? Hah! Foolish and arrogant girl!

Brooke was out of town for the weekend on a Porsche guy road trip (of course this would happen then). I was finally feeling well enough and motivated enough to do some housework and then start working on the pile of boxes in the nursery. I cleaned up the kitchen, including the big mess of cinnamon and ant bait poison for our on-going ant problem. No ants had been seen in awhile so I finally cleaned it up... feeling that as soon as I did the little bastards would reappear. Oh how true that suspicion would prove to be!

Ants in kitchen prior to Antpocalypse

Then I go upstairs to start on the nursery and look for some ribbon to hang some art (our house has picture rails everywhere) and at some point while I'm digging through the box I realize I'm standing in the middle of this HUGE mess of ants! Yeah, they had reappeared all right, in a big trail going diagonally across the entire nursery, from behind one big pile of boxes to behind another big pile of boxes.

I'll spare you all the sordid details, but suffice to say there was some frantic vacuuming, much swearing and sweating (my formerly cozy flannel pj's became a damp, stifling, shroud), shoving of piles of boxes, more vacuuming, and finally a hosing down of the room of bug spray when it just seemed like they were everywhere! Even had a bag of new baby clothes fall over onto the bug spray covered floor. Nifty.

Finally located the offending box (I think) they were after... not a forgotten chocolate bar or bag of chips, it was my special effect makeup, most likely some fake blood which is basically just corn syrup and coloring (which is kinda creepy if you think abut it as my friend Matt said, vampire ants!). I pushed the large, heavy box down the stairs and thank god for my awesome neighbors... when I appeared all sweaty in my PJ's on their back porch panting and asking for help with my ant emergency they carried the box down to the basement where I doused it with bug spray.

So, now my nursery makes me gag when I walk into it, is covered in poison and stuff thrown everywhere, and we have a house guest showing up on Sunday who is supposed to sleep in there. Oy.

I seriously believe these things are just Nature's way of testing me and trying to prepare me to be a better parent. I almost lost it a few times, but in the end seemed to have triumphed (for now... the paid professionals will be coming to make sure we keep that advantage) with no tears or puking, though it was close on both counts. Glad we still have five months to get the room cleaned up and aired out!

Wait... only five months?!!? Holy crap, I can't believe we're almost at the half way point!!! Aggghhhhhh!