Verminii Eradicus

Or at least I bloody well hope so.

You may recall I've posted before about a small mouse problem we were having in our house. A wee blighter that was managing to elude capture and removal. We did think that Wookiee had managed to get rid of it at one point (I'll post separately about Big Bad Wookiee Chasee Mousie) but when we started seeing and hearing the signs again soon after, we just assumed the blasted thing had got back in somehow.

A few days ago, after some more research into humane(ish) ways of catching pestiferous small fuzzies, I ordered some glue traps from Amazon (of all places) and put one down in a spot where I was almost certain it would catch it eventually. This was on the kitchen worktop, where it butts up against the fridge freezer (the bugger was climbing up behind the f/f).

Aaanyway, about an hour ago, I was sat in bed reading when I heard a minor clatter from downstairs. Assuming cat related shennanigins I ignored it once I determined that it hadn't disturbed Ewok. About 20 mins later there was a far worse clattering and sound of empty bottles and cans hitting tile. This was my first clue that the trap may have caught something as there were several empties on the same surface as the trap.

So I trotted off downstairs to find all three cats lurking just outside the kitchen door. I switched on the light and saw that I had indeed caught the nefarious little git that'd been causing so much trouble.

Now you'll have to excuse me my language while I get this out of my system. You see I hadn't caught a mouse...


IT WAS A FUCKING RAT!!!!!


IN MY HOUSE!!!!


*ahem*

Sorry, I'm still a little freaked out by it all actually.

Of course having caught said rat, I now had to dispose of said rat, preferably a few miles from home. At 3 o-clock in the frikkin morning. In. My. Nightie.

Having awoken Wookiee for emotional support as much as anything else, I managed to transfer rat and glue mat into a convenient Really Useful box* for the trip. Then I pulled on a pair of trousers, grabbed a bottle of oil (to release the rat from the glue, it's how it works), a torch and my cardi (it's cold and v windy outside), loaded everything into the car and set off into the night.

I drove to the next village, about 3 miles away, and parked up in the end of a track leading off across some farmland, unloaded the box and dumped the rat out. I then proceeded to try and pour oil onto the glue round the rat's feet and tail, without getting too close. This was made more interesting by the strong wind blowing the oil sideways, but I got there in the end and Meester Rat scurried off into the night minus some fur and a bit of blood (not sure why, but there was blood on the trap). I then chucked everything back in the car and went home.

As you can imagine I'm blogging this now because frankly, I'm wide awake, and I still need to get over the fact that it was a FREAKING RAT in my house, and not just a mouse. I know mice are disgusting, dirty and disease ridden as well, but they just don't creep me out the way rats do. I should also point out that it wasn't a full-grown rat, otherwise I don't think the trap would have caught it, it only being designed for mice. However I can say that the glue traps do work, very well indeed, and they're a damn sight cheaper than some of the other options.



* They really are really useful *grin*

Egghead

And not in a good way *sigh*

I had my first trip to A&E this evening after a certain Ewok, running full tilt across the living room, tripped and smashed his forehead into the edge of the wooden leg of one of our dining chairs. At first I didn't realise just how hard he'd hit it, until close inspection while comforting my sobbing and howling son showed me a HUGE egg-shaped lump on his head. I've heard people describe lumps in this way before, but this is the first time I've seen it happen. It was swelling up as I watched, within a couple of minutes it was about 1.5 inches long, by 1 inch wide and over an inch up from his head, and no, I didn't get a ruler out and measure it, this is just an estimate.

As soon as I saw this immense lump I yelled for Wookiee in my best 'Emergency, emergency, there's an emergency going on'* fashion and he came running. I showed him the lump and we agreed it was time for a trip to the local hospital.

By this time Ewok had stopped crying and when I grabbed the car keys he perked up and started saying Car! Car! (I swear I'm raising a petrolhead). So Ewok was strapped in to his car seat, with Woookiee sat in the back to keep an eye on him, and I did my best Nigel Mansel impression down the highways and byways to A&E.

We checked in and sat down to wait. Ewok snuggled for about 5 mins while he got used to being in a new strange place and then started wriggling like mad to be let down so he could run around like a loony some more. Because clearly, when you're an almost-2-year-old boy you can never run around madly bumping into things enough. Thanks to this totally unconcerned behaviour on his part I was feeling a teeny bit silly when we were finally seen by the triage nurse about 40 mins later. She asked a few questions about whether he had knocked himself out, had he been sick, checked his eyes, watched him wriggling and trying to play with her computer keyboard and said that we could go and take a seat in the main waiting area, but that there would be about a 2.5 hour wait to see a doctor, who would most likely just give us a leaflet on head inrjuries and send us home, so it was up to us if we wanted to wait.

Needless to say we didn't wait, we simply brought him home, gave him his supper and put him to bed, where, after playing with his teddies for a little while, he fell fast asleep as normal.

We did move his cot into the main bedroom for the night, because I'm still going to follow the procedure of checking on him every three hours through the night and that's just so much easier if he's in the same room. However I suspect that he's once again going to prove that toddlers are indeed made of rubber.

Anyway, once all the fuss was over and he was eating his supper, I did get some piccies of the war wound for posterity:



It's not come out very well, but you can just see the large purplish welt above his right eye. What you can't see is that it's about half an inch off his forehead. I suspect it may get more spectacular over the next few days.

*Extra credit if you know where this is from.

It's time for lunch...

...and we're just having breakfast.

I let Ewok watch CBeebies while he eats breakfast, and when I switched it on this morning (barely) they were just launching into the 'time for lunch' song that they play everyday at midday.

This is thanks to one of those nights.

Ewok went to bed at 10:30pm last night, a little later than his usual 10:00pm but still not too late. I finally got to bed at about 2:30am after spending too long stitching (as usual) and then suddenly remembering something I wanted to look up on t'internet before I went to bed.

I was struggling to settle to sleep, partly because I kept hearing suspicious noises outside, car doors going and the like, which given where we live and the fact that it was a school night (as they say) struck me as strange. Especially as one of the neighbours has recently warned me about a spate of car burglaries in our street.

So there I was, trying to relax and go to sleep, when all at once the Screaming Toddler Bad Thing Raid Siren (TM) went off at full blast. From 0 - "mummy there's a monster about to eat me" in 2 pico-seconds!

I waited the requisite 2 minutes to see if this was one of his usual "wake in the night, squawk a bit, go back to sleep" routines, but this time the screaming didn't settle down, the sobs got louder and the cot rattling started up. This was at 3:30am

I then spent the next hour and 45 mins in an endless round of cuddles, putting him back in the cot, more screaming and tantrums, teddies being thrown at me and then demanded back, only to be refused and then demanded again when taken away. At one point I lay down on the floor next to the cot with a cushion for a pillow and one of his spare sheets for a blanket and he flung himself over the side of the cot (I'd left the side dropped at this point) and tried to curl up with me. I briefly thought about taking him up to bed with me but I really don't want to go down that route. I did change his nappy, try to put him in his sleeping bag as he felt a bit cold (cue more screaming), gave him a slice of bread and some water (which went down a treat), and sing to him (something that he usually likes, but this time: more screaming). At one point it seemed like his big teddy had 'given him the fear', but when I put it out of the room he only howled louder until I brought it back in again.

I still have no idea what set him off (I'm assuming a nightmare) or what finally settled him down, but at around 5am he finally lay down and looked happy about doing so, so I left him to it. He did still howl for a couple of minutes after I left the room, but this time it was the usual half-hearted "don't wanna be in bed" protest, and then he finally dropped off again.

I left a strategically placed "Be vewwy vewwy qwiet (hunting wabbits)" note for Wookiee, promising dire things should he wake Ewok up while prepping to leave for work himself (at about 7am) and finally managed to get back to bed myself. It was still around 6am before I fell asleep.

Then, of course, in the way of these things I heard a knock at the door at 8:30am and it was a delivery guy with a parcel for Wookiee. Fortunately this didn't wake Ewok up (his room is right next to the front door) and I went back to bed and sleep.

So I was finally awoke by the usual morning chirping from the monitor at 11:15am, got up and left the bedroom to hear small animal screaming noises from the basement. Went downstairs to find a young blackbird, still alive but definitely the worse for wera, cornered by one of the cats. That went back out the catflap to take it's chances and then I went back up to get Ewok up.

This is when the other shoe dropped.

You see I'm frequently faced with a leaky nappy first thing in the morning. He's been piddling in it all night and then in typical male fashion he takes a poop when he wakes up, which just overloads the nappy. I'd had a faint hope that because I'd changed a quite soggy nappy in the night, I would be spared the leaky one this morning.

No. Such. Luck.

As a special treat, this morning I had to deal with an exploding nappy instead. In fact somehow his pyjama bottoms had escaped the carnage, but he had it all over his hands, and he'd been wiping them on his front, so his top was covered in it. Then when I got the nappy off him I discovered that it had gone up his back, which I suspect is where the stuff on his hands had come from. This was when I stripped him down completely, picked him up by the now wiped down hands, and dangle-carried him to the shower in his bathroom. He doesn't really like the shower but I wasn't messing about trying to get him in the bath. Both the baths in this house are on different floors from his bedroom, whereas he has an en-suite shower room, and the prospect of poopy carnage through the house was enough to steel me to his howls of protest about being showered.

So, in all, a shitty night and a shitty morning. I can't wait for the rest of the day.

(apologies for any spelling mistakes or typos, but I really can't be arsed to proofread)

Spotless

So far so good, although after looking up chicken pox online I discovered that the incubation period is 15-21 days, so I have to wait until this coming Monday to be sure we've escaped it.

Getting enough sleep continues to be a problem. Last week the builders started work on next door's extension. This involved much noise of pneumatic drills, circular saws cutting into tarmac, and various diggers running up and down the driveway with loads of rubble. All this from 8am each day *urgh*

Ewok has been sleeping better. Most of the time now, when he wakes in the night it's because he's bumped his head into the side of the cot in his sleepcrawling. It usually goes something like: Clonk (as of head hitting side of cot), Waaaah! (I bumped my head), Yawn (still tired), zzzzzzzz. He is starting to get better at avoiding the sides of the cot during his nocturnal ramblings, but he seems to have a penchent for sleeping with his head rammed into a corner, or across the cot, which isn't as wide as he's long.

Of course last night his teeth started bothering him again and he woke up screaming in pain at 2:30am. It was so bad I had to rush downstairs and grab a sachet of his teething grains and a dose of Calpol and run back upstairs to try and get both of thim down him. Poor love was still mostly asleep so getting the grains in his mouth was interesting, the calpol was much easier because I still use the syringes. Once this was achieved I popped him back in the cot and within 10 minutes he was fast asleep again.

Tomorrow we're all supposed to be going to the UK Games Expo in Birmingham, which will be Ewoks' very first games con, but if he's still suffering then Wookiee may well be going without us.

No, no, no, no, no!

Seems to be all I'm saying these days. Now Ewok is well and truely on the move he's getting into everything. We've already had to move all the media electronics to shelves on the wall, from their previous location which was under the telly.

I don't want to be saying no to him all the time, but it seems as though that's all I do. The little ratbag has decided, that despite the miriad of toys available for him to play with, what he really wants to do is:
a) Stand in front of the telly and pat the screen.
b) Go bin diving and chew on whatever he manages to pull out.
c) Chase the kitties (I don't mind this one, they can run)
d) Pull up on my legs and yank my stitching lap tray off my knee, scissors and all!
e) Escape from the room by shoving the barrier out of the way (we don't have a fixed gate yet, just a panel from his playpen leaning across the doorway)

He's attempting (e) at the moment. He only tends to get really enthusiastic about this if he's on his own in the room, or if the cats are eating. Their food bowls are clearly in sight through the fence, so he trys to combine (e) with (c).

Last night we were back to him waking up once and crying for ages. Each time I got him settled and then left him and sat on the bed waiting to be sure he was properly asleep before getting comfy myself. Because of my back and joint problems this is easier on me than getting back into bed properly only to have to get up again 5 mins later. I had to repeat this routine every 5-10 mins for about an hour until he finally went back to sleep for good and I got back to bed.

We're both pretty shattered this morning though. He didn't go to bed until 2am, I didn't go up until 3am and we were going through the motions between 4:30 and 5:30am. That wouldn have been fine if the builders hadn't decided to start work on next door's extension this morning. They woke me up at 9:30am dismantling the porch. Ewok slept through, but I decided to get him up at about 10:30am in an attepmt to get him to bed at a more normal time tonight.

He also finally has his first tooth! About bloody time with all the teething he's been doing for the last 4 months. I noticed it last night when he was chomping on my finger. It felt sharper than usual and after much squirming and wriggling on his part and poking of fingers into mouth on may part I saw a little cut in his bottom gum at the front, and a wee bitty of white peeping through.

Typical

Thank you to Melanie, Joy and Gina for their comments on my previous post, Mel you're right, he was 8 months old a week ago. However as seems to be typical with Ewok, no sooner do I bitch about his behaviour than he changes it.

Last night he woke me up so many times I lost count, but each time he was just shuffling himself about, sometimes it was obvious that he was awake too, other times I couldn't tell, there was the occasional wail but nothing prolonged and I didn't have to get up to him once. I'm now wondering if this is because he's realised that he doesn't have to sleep on his back any more, and he's just trying to find the most comfortable position.

Given that he didn't want to get up until midday (after going to bed at 12:15am) I'm assuming that he still didn't sleep very well. He's got slightly smaller bags under his eyes compared to yesterday (think clutch bag vs suitcase) and he's not quite as pale, so I'm hoping that he's going to improve over the next few nights until he's sleeping soundly again.

The few nights that I fed him, it was very clear that he needed the feed, he was rooting as much as he did when he was first born, and he fed for a good hour each time before falling asleep again. So I'm pretty sure it was a growth spurt rather than anything else. On the whole he's a very good baby and not one to demand something he doesn't need, or complain about nothing.

I really do need to make the bumpers for his cot though. Because he's big for his age, when he's moving about in his cot he frequently bumped his head against the bars and occasionally this disturbed him into a little cry. It's not as if it'll take me long to make them, it's getting the fabric cut out that's the problem.

Anyway, he's having a nap at the moment but he's due to wake up soon and I need to get some other stuff done before he does. I'll try and be a bit more regular about posting in future.

Urgh

I'm absolutely shattered. For the last three weeks I haven't had an uninterrupted nights sleep. This may not sound so bad to some mums since Ewok has been sleeping through the night since he was 10 weeks old, but therein lies the rub.

Because he's been sleeping through the night, when he doesn't, it really buggers me up.

It started with teething trouble. Waking up three or four times a night with pain. Each time a bit of a pat and/or cuddle would see him off to sleep again. Occasionally I had to give him some pain relief and a prolonged cuddle.

He was getting over all that and had one night where he slept through again, however I didn't courtesy of our smoke alarms, which decided to go off in the middle of the night for no good reason. Fortunately they didn't wake Ewok up, just Wookiee and me.

The next night saw the start of a mini growth spurt, and he was suddenly waking up ravenous after only 3-4 hours sleep. For three nights in a row I had to get up and feed him twice in the night.

Last monday I went to Baby Club which is an hour and a half playgroup for under 1's at the local Sure Start centre, and asked the community nurse for some advice on what to about his waking. She told me not to feed him if I could help it, because I need him to be able to got to sleep without being fed (at the moment he still falls asleep and gets put to bed off the last feed of the night). Well that night he did wake up but obviously didn't want feeding this time (growth spurt over), however, while he would doze off almost straight away on my shoulder, ever time I put him down he started crying again. In the end I got him to sleep on me and then slowly lowered him down onto the bed beside me, and when he stayed asleep I just put a pillow on the far side of him (to stop him rolling off the bed) curled up on his other side and went to sleep myself. He did wake up a couple more times, but each time, because I was right there, I magaed to settle him down again almost straight away.

Over the next day and night I noticed that he was snuffling and quite snotty (ick), but otherwise fine. So I got the burner out and filled the house with camphor fumes which really helped him, it also helped him at night, but obviously I can't have the burner on at night. So I've been using a bowl of hot water with a few drops of oil under the head of the cot. The last three nights he's only woken up once, each night at the same time: 2:30am, despite when he goes to bed. Each time he'll fall asleep on my shoulder and then cry when I put him down, and it takes several attempts before he's tired enough to stay asleep.

Last night I decided after three attempts at putting him back down, that I was going to let him cry it out. Oh god it was awful.

In hindsight I should have left the room, I didn't realise that a baby's eyesight was so good at this age, so he would have been able to see me sitting there watching over him. He pushed himself up and sat in his cot and cried and cried. Every so often he would be obviously tired and start either falling forwards asleep and then waking up again, or actually trying to lie down. But each time he either bumped his head, or couldn't get comfy and would sit up and carry on crying. I really wanted to just go over and halp him to lie down, but I was worried that it I did that, it would disturb him to the point of setting him off again.

Eventually, after what seemed like hours, and after yet another of his failed attemptss to lie down, I did give in. I went over and scootched him down onto his back. He started grizzling again but didn't try and get up, and after a further 10-15 mins of wriggling and grizzling he finally got comfy on his side and went back to sleep. That was when I checked the clock and realised that I'd actually let him cry for about an hour. I didn't realise it had been so long. It felt like it, but I thought that was because I was sitting there listening to my darling crying his heart out.

After that I only got about 4 hours sleep before I woke up again and couldn't get back to sleep. He slept for another 2 hours before waking up and when I was his little face this morning I went to pieces. He looked quite pale, had red puffy bags under his eyes and his face was crusted with snot and blanket fluff and I felt like the worst mum in the world for doing that to my baby.

He's actually been fine today, maybe a little more tired and cranky than usual, but he went to bed at a good hour and I'll be following him soon. If he wakes up again tonight and wont settle I'll be letting him cry again, but this time, the first time he tries to lie down, if he can't manage it on his own then I'll be there to gently help him settle. No way I'm leaving him to struggle again.

I'm sure you will have your own opinions on this approach and I realise that by posting this that I may be in for some inflamatory comments. Feel free to post your opinions (whether you agree or disagree with my methods) but I ask that you please keep them constructive and polite. I'm always open to suggestions and possible insights from anyone who's been there and done that, especially if your kids turned out all right *grin*