8 months

Edit: A few minutes after I posted this, Orrin woke up and while feeding him I felt his first tooth poking through! Its barely visible, but definitely through the skin.


Not much is new from last month. But here goes:

He is still desperate to crawl. He moves backward now, but it makes him pretty angry since that's not the direction he wants to go.

He can almost use the sippy cup by himself, he just can't quite lift it high enough yet.

He can almost feed himself, but can't quite open his hand enough to get a puff or cheerio out into his mouth.

He still loves to experiment with sounds, octaves, and decibel ranges.

He loves music. He is loving listening to records with Scott at night.

The dogs make him laugh, especially when Spot is whining.

He will eat anything! Even if he doesn't seem to like it, he'll keep eating. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing...

He can wave and pound a drum (the toy one he has). We are working on clapping and dancing.

He loves church nursery. We always get a good report when we pick him up.

He hates balloons.

OA Part 3

Obsessive much??

Yeah, these ants are bringing out the OCD in me. Here's what happened a couple of days ago in that storm (this brought other drama between us, the neighbors and the city of Kentwood, but that's another post I guess):

Apparently the flood drove all of the ants into our window for refuge. That afternoon, and yesterday morning everywhere I turned in the kitchen, there was an ant! I realized there were some crawling between the storm window and actual window so I sprayed soapy water in between the windows. Then they all appeared - like 30 ants just hanging out in the base of the window - trying to get out, so I unleashed like half the bottle in there. Once they were all dead, I didn't see another ant for the rest of the afternoon. I almost thought I won! But then before bed, I found 3. So Scott did some investigating and we noticed a bunch more in the window - which we drowned again. Then he sprayed the good stuff outside on the window. Today: Peace.

Sort of. They are definitely messing with me. Yesterday when I woke up, there was a dead ant next to my pillow. Ew. Then today, I was in the basement taking pictures of Orrin (yay, 8 month post coming up soon!) and he was leaning way over examining something.

A closer look revealed this:

OA part 2

These ants are making me crazy! I have actually had dreams about ants the last two nights.

I think my pepper/cinnamon combo is not working anymore. I also tried apple cider vinegar sprayed around the window. And then I watched them crawl right through it.
I've had to kill at least 20-30 ants over the last couple days, and one so far this morning. Everytime I turn around in the kitchen, there's another one! I set down a lid from strawberries for a few minutes last night while Scott and I ate them, and found one in it when I went to rinse it out.

DE is a good idea, mom. I could also sprinkle straight Borax. The problem is that I don't have a flat surface to sprinkle onto. We only see the ants on the side of the house. They might live in the plants along the back, or the wood piles on the side, but we're not sure (our biggest fear is that they are living IN the house somewhere). But to keep them out of the house, I need something that I can spray along the window. I think they have caught onto my borax/honey/sugar mixture, too, because I don't see them eating it anymore, even after I spread a fresh batch out there yesterday. Scott's faith in my methods is waning and I think he will be spraying something/calling an exterminator soon.

Well, at least I tried!

Operation Ant Day 1 and 2

I love spring! But I hate the ants that come with it. They like to come in through our kitchen window and scout things out. Wednesday, I noticed several ants in the morning so I started doing my research on how to get rid of them using non-toxic methods. Here's what I tried:

First off, a quick kill method that doesn't involve squishing and crunching - fill a squirt bottle with water and add some dish soap. This works fabulously, killing the ant in a matter of seconds, and it also helps with the kitchen cleaning!

Once I killed what I could see, I worked on keeping them out of the kitchen:

I placed bay leaves along the window sill. I guess this did not work as soon after I saw an ant crawling on one of the leaves.

In a last desperate attempt, I sprinkled both cinnamon and pepper in the window. This seems to have actually helped, I have only seen one ant inside since I did this and it came through at the top of the window, avoiding the cinnamon and pepper. Not sure which one of the two is doing the repelling (or maybe both).

Scott gave me a few days to try a natural method of killing all the outdoor ants before he buys some ant killer and sprays it out there. So I mixed 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup honey in a glass jar and microwaved to melt the sugar. Then I added 1/4 cup borax. I spread some of this on the window outside and threw little balls of it in the weeds along the house and in the wood piles along the field. At any given time yesterday and today there are a few ants outside the window eating the stuff, so I have hope.


Maybe we will inspect the yard and try to place some near any ant hills we find out there. I also read that you can buy the miracle grow spray and mix borax into that and spray around the yard. This is also supposed to kill fleas.

Maybe this will help anyone else dealing with ants! I will let you know if our methods have worked.


*An FYI - Borax is not non-toxic (but is considered low toxicity). I don't think ingesting a little bit will hurt the dogs or wildlife that might lick it up but I did put most of it up out of reach of the dogs at least. And what is on the ground is in very small amounts so hopefully the worst I could do is give a mouse a tummy ache.