Mercedes and the Girls: The Rest of July

Cutie girls playing on our bed on a Sunday afternoon.

Miriam 7/25/10: Her sitting is getting better and better all the time! It's strange--it seems like the other two girls would always fall backwards and smack heads, but Mimi always goes forward.

And if she leans far enough to her side, she always goes down. And then immediately rolls to her tummy.

One of our messier eating sessions.

The previous owners of our house left a fire pit, so we fired it up.

POTD 7/25/10: There are few things better than roasted marshmallows.

POTD 7/26/10: Every time I open the grill, there are frogs on it. There have, thus far, not been any IN it, but I always check. This one looked like he was trying to use his tiny knobby hand to turn the grill on.

Miriam 7/26/10: I gave her a graham cracker to chew on, and she really just did a lot of gagging, as there is not much actual chewing going on. I finally got worried and took it away. I think she liked how it tasted, though.

POTD 7/27/10: The outside temperature was around 95 today, and this is what our thermostat read. Ugh. Yesterday Brad had thought the air conditioner wasn't working properly--it would run for literally hours at a time, but the house still was not down to the temperature we had set it at. So it wouldn't run all night, we turned it off for the night, and called the repairman to come out. So all day long, this is how hot our house was. It was terrible. As it turned out, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the air conditioner, and the repairman thought it was the city shutting off air conditioners so we didn't black out. Also turns out, we made a mistake turning it off during the night, as that's when it can catch back up. (The next day, a different repairman was called, as it still was just not working, and he determined that the air conditioner is just this side of being too small for the house. Great. It certainly won't be replaced this year.)

Remember the giant fly in the drain catcher? Well, here's the full story, which should probably be its own post. The next couple days after that, we kept seeing these enormous flies. We live by a scummy pond, so we just kind of figured they were a byproduct of that, etc. So we were extra vigilant about keeping screen doors closed and all that. But we kept seeing them, and it seemed like more and more of them. So, on around 7/25, we were out in the sun room, and there were a ton of them. We honestly swatted around 15 flies. And they were just not normal flies. Super sluggish, which is how we got them swatted so easily, and ENORMOUS in size. So 15 or so flies later, Brad and I are looking at each other and wondering what the heck was going on. But, we got them all, so we were satisfied.

Well. The next day there were more, although not quite as many, and we had been careful about keeping the doors shut. There was no way they were coming in through an open screen door. But we kept swatting, and hoped that no more would come in the house.

Enter 7/27/10. Same day as the failing air conditioner, 82 degree indoor temperatures. The girls had gone downstairs to play, as it was cooler down there, and I heard Mac freak out about a fly. I heard Leiden tell her to just shoo it away. I didn't think much of it until I'd heard it a couple times, and then I heard Leiden say something like, "They're all over there. It's okay, Mac." And the black light went on. I slowly went down the stairs, and there were at least 40 flies down there. I cannot tell you how disgusted I was. They were zooming through the air, there were probably 25 on the little window down there, and you could see them on the walls from the other side of the basement. I was completely and totally grossed out, and told the girls to go upstairs to play. I honestly didn't know what to do. I did some internet reading, and found that a lot of people have fly trouble when they lay eggs in the vents, and then they are flushed out when the air comes on. So then I started worrying that that was somehow connected to the air conditioner suddenly not working. I called a couple exterminators to ask their opinion, and they said that was a possibility, and one of them told me that if the flies are downstairs, that's where they originated from, as flies always fly up, very rarely down. I WAS SO GROSSED OUT! This same guy said that if there is a fireplace in the basement (there is) that that would be the first place he would look for the source--some animal got into the chimney, got stuck, died, and a fly laid eggs. And then explained that once you see the fly infestation, the source has been all eaten up. Every word I heard made me sick to my stomach. Then he topped off his pleasant news with the caution that flies lay between 30 and 300 eggs, so we probably hadn't seen the worst of it yet. Super cool.

So we headed out to Home Depot to get some fly paper, and I braved the ghastly filthy little flying creatures to hang them downstairs and then went upstairs and shut the basement door--luckily we have a basement door!--and left it shut the rest of the day. Poor Brad, when he came home, he had to deal with it. So he got out the vacuum, which grossed me out as well, as our vacuum is bagless.

Here are some flies Brad swatted and then picked up with the fly paper. None of them landed on it on their own, so don't go buy any. It doesn't work.

Brad also had to go hunting for the source, if he could find it. Sure enough, he found a large bird--some kind of hawk or something--in the chimney, just above the ledge inside. I refused to go near the fireplace, but he said it was a big bird, with pretty much just his golf ball size skull and feathers left. Ugh. He also did some reading on the flies, and they are called, if you can stand the grossness of it, 'flesh flies', because they are born and feed on flesh. So if we'd known this, those very first flies would have been a tip off that something had died and the flies had hatched on it. Thankfully the exterminator was wrong about the continued increase of flies. We found only a handful more over the next couple days. We figure with the bird being in the chimney, many of the flies probably went up and out. Thank heavens. It took me a couple days to feel comfortable in the basement again, but all is well now. And now back to our nice, beautiful lives.

Sweet Mimi

Miriam 7/28/10: Favorite thing in the world? Chewing on a toy.

POTD 7/28/10: At lunch, Mac said, "Mommy, the dinosaur is drinking my milk." And I turned around to this.

More frogs. These are kind of nondescript ones--grey and boring, but every once in a while we see bright green ones. They are much faster.

Mac was dressed like a ballerina and trying to mop.

Discovered pluots. A cross between a plum and an apricot. They are kind of ugly on the outside, and then you cut them open and they are this beautiful pink color. They taste good, too.

POTD 7/30/10: I made gingerbread pancakes for breakfast this morning. I kind of jump the gun for fall and everything that comes with it and after it, which is silly, considering what comes after fall here. They were only so-so.