We’ve been waiting a long time for Oliver to laugh. He smiles like a maniac, but no audible expressions of mirth. Well, he finally did it today.
What finally put him over the top? Sara saying, “Your sister is going to drive me batty!”
Fruit Fly Don’t Bother Me
Contrary to the title of this post, fruit flies drive me crazy. The title is in reference to the song Evie sings when a fruit fly is buzzing around her: “Fruit fly don’t bother me, fruit fly don’t bother me, fruit fly don’t bother me, ’cause I belong to somebody!”
We have two problems, 1) we have an amazing amount of fresh produce lying around at all times. Between Sara’s two-a-day banana smoothie habit and the tomatoes etc. from the garden, amongst all of our other fruit consumption, about every square inch of available space is covered in fruit. 2) We save compost for the garden. I’m not sure this is really a problem anymore, since we now store it in seal-able containers, but I think it used to be more of a problem when we were using empty milk cartons.
For whatever the reason, we have fruit flies from time to time and I HATE them! It’s kind of funny though, you never really see a big cloud of fruit flies. Usually you see only one fruit fly. Finally you kill it and you think, “Ha, I got that fruit fly! Now I won’t have a fruit fly bothering me anymore!” Not so. Somewhere in the house, fruit fly dispatch sees that I’ve killed one and sends a replacement out to bother me immediately. There is a never ending supply of them!
BUT! We have now won the war! I’m here to tell you, I have the cure for fruit flies!
Take a regular cereal bowl and fill it with equal parts apple cider vinegar and water. Then put a few drops of dish soap in. The fruit flies are attracted to the vinegar and they try to land on the water to get it. Normally a fruit fly can walk on the surface of the water due to the surface tension. This is where the dish soap comes in. The dish soap breaks the surface tension on the water and the fruit fly sinks to the bottom.
If you have fruit flies, try this out! It is an amazingly effective fruit fly trap and doesn’t cost anything. Sara and I were cackling gleefully every time we trapped one of the little bastards. Here’s to a fruit fly free home!
Quote Monday – Water Edition
Me: “I’m going to go stick my head in the fountain.”
Evie, getting upset: “Nooooo!”
Me: “Why not?”
Evie: “Because that’s where your ears are!”
She does not like water in her ears! Really, she doesn’t like water anywhere near her face, but particularly the ears. So I didn’t stick my head in the fountain because she was upset, but after a while she started tugging me over towards the fountain. “Guess where I’m taking you!” she said. So I went over and put my head in the fountain (it was a really hot day). As soon as I took my head out she started sobbing.
Evie: “You need a towel! Get a towel!”
Me: “Why? It will dry, honey. I like getting my head wet.”
Evie: “No! No! You have to poke your ears!”
By this I assume she meant dry the water out of my ears (it wasn’t even in my ears!) I told you she doesn’t like water in her ears!
Sara: “Why are your breadsticks wet?”
This was in response to some of the saddest, soggiest, most unappealing breadsticks I have ever seen. The place had a “limited menu” for Sunday that was so crummy, Sara and I decided not to eat.
Me: “What was your favorite part about the water park?”
Evie: “When we went to the potty!”
It’s not like she didn’t have a good time! I don’t know why we even try to plan things. However, it should be noted that she let me dunk her head in the water (asked me to do it actually!) This has never happened before (see above for water-in-her-ears-phobia). She didn’t even rush to get out and get a towel right away (but she did a different time the same day when she accidentally tripped and her head went under for a nanosecond).
I should also mention that Sara totally flipped out of her tube and got dunked the first time she went down the big slide. Of course, this was the only time this happened and I wasn’t around. Totally missed it! 😦
As for me, I am totally lobster-ized. I slapped some sun screen on my shoulders, arms, face and neck, and even reapplied it. That is why every place other than my shoulders, arms, face and neck is bright red like I’m wearing some sort of weird red sunburn sandwich board. It’s actually kind of funny because it looks even worse compared to my un-burned arms and shoulders. And usually, whenever you have a sunburn, your shoulders are the worst part. But since my shoulders were protected, it doesn’t really hurt much to wear a shirt! I guess we know for sure that the new sunscreen we were trying works! Consider my painful middle the control group.
ZombieFit
Everybody wants to lose weight, to exercise more. It’s the motivation that’s the problem. It’s just that there really isn’t anything motivational enough to get me to run, jump, etc.
Well, there is one thing: zombies!
Now in Chicago you can sign up for ZombieFit, which bills itself as “fitness to survive the apocolypse”.
The keys to surviving Z-day are simple: Be able to lift and throw heavy things, run fast and for long distances, and be able to navigate obstacles and urban environments in an efficient manner.
I will let them describe the program, in their own words:
…five to a dozen people gather to run, jump, climb and vault up, over and around obstacles that stand in for the features of a city in the grip of a zombie infestation. They also undergo strength and conditioning training because zombies are relentless.
There are no actual zombies or zombie stand-ins, though Gatz says they are invoked for inspiration. A precision jump, for example, requires participants to land in an exact location, much as they would have to do if fleeing a zombie from rooftop to rooftop.
“You’ve got to land that, or the zombies are going to get you,” Gatz tells students.
I think it is time for the haters to admit that I’m not the only one talking about zombies here. It’s common enough to be a business model.
Link via Jackie.
Speaking of zombies, I sure wish someone would come up with some plans for a rocket propelled chainsaw. Because that would just be the most ridiculous…
Ollie Update
Oliver is about 3 1/2 months now and that boy just doesn’t stop growing! He’s probably going to be done with 9 month clothes pretty soon. So, sorry to anybody who bought him smaller clothes, he didn’t get much use out of them!
Lately Oliver has been doing a lot of cooing, copying sounds, etc. He sticks his tongue out a lot, and thinks its funny when you stick yours out too. He will copy you on that, sticking his tongue out when you stick yours out and pulling it in when you pull yours in.
He has suddenly decided that he does NOT like the bath after all. By not like the bath I mean absolutely HATES the bath. It was so weird, it’s like a switch turned in his head and now he can’t stand it. Sometimes we can make him forget he is in the bath for a little bit by singing or getting him smiling, but then he will suddenly go, “Wait a minute!” and then he just howls the rest of the time. We haven’t taken him swimming yet, but I don’t have high hopes based on the past week or so of the bath. He used to like them as much as Evie just a few weeks ago, so I don’t know what happened. We’re hoping he gets over it because we’re so used to Evie loving the bath that we don’t know what to do with him otherwise.
I would say the biggest thing for me is not being very good at calming him. I was the master at calming Evie. When no one else could get her to go to sleep, I could do it. I thought that I just had mad baby skillz, but I’m discovering that it might have had more to do with Evie than with me. I have no ability to stop Oliver from crying. Eventually I am forced to hand him over to Sara where he generally stops crying more or less instantly. This is sort of the exact reverse of Evie. Sara is a little worried because, with as much as Evie would cling on her at a certain age, she’s not sure what she will do if Oliver is even more of a Mama’s boy!
He can’t sit up yet, though he likes to go in that position if you hold him. He tries pretty hard to roll over, but he needs a lot of help. He has rolled both front to back and back to front a few times, but there was always some extenuating circumstance, like he was laying on the bed next to me, so the indentation of my big butt helped him roll over (or possibly just the sheer gravity of my big butt, it’s hard to tell). So I don’t think he could do it from a flat surface.
I think that’s about it! Just regular 3 1/2 month old stuff (but twice as big).
Shane Halbach 