10/18/2007 - The ants go marching one by one . . .

We're being overrun by ants. Literally, they're everywhere, but mainly they're on the kitchen floor. It's understandable that this is where they'd be, since it's where most of the food in our home is. Isn't that where everybody else keeps meals and meals worth of sandwich crumbs and glumpy drying jelly, little crumbly pieces of turkey bacon and spatters of strawberry milk?

In the back of my head I think that if I just never clean the kitchen floor, then the ants will be able to survive and live quite well there, never having to venture out to other areas of our house. It's an excellent idea for their containment, even if I do say so myself.

But I can't do it. They drive me insane, the ants do, and so does the mess. It's not that we're unclean people, exactly . . . it's just that we have a very exuberant three-year-old who just loves to be Cookie Monster at the table. And if it's not that, then he's pretending that his sandwich crusts are actually bulldozers, clearing unwanted debris from the tabletop. And if it's not that, then . . . well, then he's just three years old and half of the food simply doesn't make it into his mouth. Between Tim and me, the floors do get swept at least twice a day, but it's a little like shoveling the driveway during a snowstorm. And we're losing the battle.


So in comes Jonah, who in the last two days, has learned to crawl. Oh we're so proud of his accomplishment, and so . . . well . . . so grossed out that he especially likes to lay on his belly on the kitchen floor and work on that pincer grasp thing with the fallen food. It's a little mini-buffet for him, I guess, but he's going to have to fight with the ants for his share of the crumbs. Of course, Joshua is happy to oblige, and to feed the masses down below, but still . . . yuck. So I'm calling all of the exterminator companies around, to see if there are any who aren't dealing in extortion. Which they all are because, seriously? Three hundred dollars to come treat the house and yards? At that rate I'd throw the ants a party and welcome them in with open arms. And Jonah would be just as happy to dine beside them, or even on them, probably.

Speaking of dining . . . would you look at Jonah and think that he eats his weight in food each day? That we must have started him on solids awfully early? Well, the truth is neither. The truth is actually that he hardly eats any solid foods at all (and by solid I mean as finely pureed as you can make it), and is mostly just nursing for nourishment. But he's such a little hoss that we don't even know what to do with him. At eight months old he is wearing eighteen month clothing. We've had to abandon the infant car seat in favor of a convertible one that holds more weight, and if he doesn't start walking soon we're going to buy stock in the chiropractic industry for the near future, when our backs go out.

And the funny thing? We wouldn't have it any other way. Because when I go in to soothe his big little self at night, and he cuddles his fat rolls into me and I feel his doughy weight on my chest, I am content. As he sighs a breathy sleep-sigh, I know that I hold the world in my arms.