Christmas Day woes

What an awful subject line!

Problem is, it's true.  I shutter at the thought of posting this, but for the sake of documenting, I must.

The guts of Christmas: prepping, wrapping, traveling, enjoying, fellowship, meditating on The greatest gift, uncontainable excitement, wrapping paper messes and impossible packaging nightmares were all superb and wonderful and grand in our own family's special way.  But a small shadow of yuck, with a little twinge of gut-sinking was introduced to our precious Christmas Day.

You see, after the excitement of Christmas morning settled in, and each child had more toys than they knew what to do with and my parents and grandparents witnessed my house in the worst disarray they've ever seen, it was time to lay Brandon down for his nap.

I prepped him, quieted him, hugged him and whispered sweet nothings in his ear.  Then, when I bent over to lay him in his crib I noticed some blood spots.  I had noticed them the week before, but just thought they were from a hang nail on his toe that I had forgotten to trim, and it caught on the sheets, and started bleeding a little and eventually quit.  But this was more than just a little hang nail blood.  There was more than that and we hadn't noticed it before because when we usually pick him up out of his bed, it's dark.

My heart sank.

Actually, it started beating really fast.

My face went pale and I started to enter into a pre-panic stage.

I walked calmly to Jim, who was in the middle of saying good-bye to my mom and grandparents and said, "You need to come see this now."

My Mom noticed the urgency, gave me a hug, wished me a Merry Christmas and led her mom and dad out the door.

When Jim saw the blood on the bed, his face lost color also and he said, "Do you think it is?"

Our worst nightmare was coming to fruition.





Jim works with Chemical companies.  It's his job.  He has a pesticide license.  He's heard from the sales reps horror stories of people dying of Temik poisoning, caught in a belly button, from a granule the size of a Nerd candy.  He's also heard horror stories of bed bug infestations.  Like half the hotels in Orlando have/had bed bugs and that they're real boogers to get rid of.  Very costly and time-consuming.

So mix in a little chemical sales rep horror stories with an overload of cautious-nature and we get full-blown paranoid-city when we would visit hotels.  We'd put all our luggage on the tile floor in the bathrooms, check the mattress seams, behind the headboard and underneath the nightstands.  All looking for remnants of those tick-looking creatures that roam the sheets and prey on sleeping targets.  Then, when we'd get home, we'd lay all the luggage and it's contents out on the driveway and let it bake in the 100-degree Florida sun for half the day, then run all the clothes, dirty or not, through a hot wash cycle and high hot dry cycle.

Sounds like overkill?  I thought so.





Back to Christmas day...

We decided not to lay Brandon back in his bed so we got out the pack 'n play and laid him down in there.  In the middle of Christmas day and lunch time, we did our best to process what we had just seen and inspect his crib even further.

The rest of the day was difficult to enjoy, I'll just be honest here.  We researched online what bed bugs looked like, because our blood-drained faces were tell-tale signs our greatest fear was lurking, living and feeding in our home.

That night, after the kids were asleep, Jim and I turned into spelunking-like inspectors.  We both had on head lamps and every 30 minutes, until well into the wee hours of the morning, we would sneak into Brandon's room, quickly turn on the lamps, turn over pillows, blankets, stuffed animals and collect the blasted little creatures that were scattering away from the light.  Our collection was nearing a dozen inside a ziploc bag so our next order of business was to research pest control companies to call first thing the next morning.

We selected 2 we felt comfortable with and December 26th, at 7am in the morning, we called both companies and scheduled for them to come out to inspect.

Both pesticide experts confirmed the little creatures in the ziploc bags were bed bugs and they both gave us estimates on destroying the pests.  One estimate cost less but was labor-intensive.  It was going to mean living out of plastic bags for 6 weeks.  The other estimate cost more, and was labor-intensive also, but it was going to be 99% over the next day.

We opted for the more expensive one.  Not what anybody wants to be spending Christmas $ on the day after Christmas.

One other thing that was terribly heartbreaking at the time was the surgery I had planned.  I had nose surgery scheduled for December 27th.  A surgery I had been needing/wanting for 25 years and here we were having to choose an indefinite cancellation of surgery because of bed bugs.  I willingly submitted to whatever decision my husband thought was best for our family.  But was still a little sad.  Mad mostly, at those stupid bugs.

The next plan of attack was prepping for the pesticide treatment.  The more expensive yet quicker option involved heating our entire house up to 140 degrees for a duration of 4 hours.  Which meant mattresses were turned upright, candles and aerosols were removed from the house, ALL the clothes in drawers were taken out and run through a high heat cycle in the dryer for 30 minutes and everything in the closets had to be cleared enough for the heat to penetrate through everything.  Quilts were taken down, clothes had to be hanging freely, not bunched together, books on shelves had to be opened up, you name it, we had to clean it/prep it for the heat.  Basically, EVERYTHING in the house had to be heat penetrable because the heat was what was going to kill the bugs.

We ended up taking 3 truck loads of old clothes/trash to the dump, the dryer ran continuously for a day and a half, and I still had 30 loads to dry down at the laundromat.  After all the clothes were dried, they then had to be bagged, sealed and placed outside to avoid re-infestation.  Our back porch patio table was piled high with clothes in trash bags, sealed off with blue painters tape and my attempt to labels what was in each one.  I lost count after 30 bags.  Oh yeah, and Jim started coming down with flu-like symptoms in the middle of all this.

My mom graciously took the older 2 with her the afternoon of the 26th while we cleaned and we decided to camp out in Pedro Friday night.  Friday was the day our house was being heated/treated and it just happened to be in the 30s that morning, which makes it more difficult to heat an ENTIRE HOUSE up to 140 degrees.  They arrived at 8 in the morning and we were soon gone, temporarily displaced from our home because of disgusting, tick-like bugs.  It took them all day to complete the heating process, because they had to heat the house in shifts.  It required more/larger heaters that they didn't have.  I think they finally left our house around 7pm.  Thank goodness we decided to camp out in Pedro.

Saturday morning, I left Pedro early to start getting our house back in order.  The beds needed to be made, clothes put back in the drawers, just general putting together stuff before the precious little hurricanes entered.  But I got about 15 minutes into unpacking and felt sick.  I came down with flu-like symptoms and basically called that morning/day a wash because my back was flat on the bed most of the day.

Oh when it rains, it pours.

We eventually got through it ALL.  We completed a great Spring cleaning a couple of months early and since then we've been bed bug free.

It's not a story we're proud of, besides the fact that Jim and I pulled off an incredible feat in a short amount of time.  But certainly worth documenting.

Nasty little joker

Christmas 2012

( I have a confession, it is March 22nd, 2013, the day before Katherine's 7th birthday party and I'm finally getting around to blogging about Christmas.  Yes, it's 3 months late.  No, I don't remember that much about this day, except Katherine got a Karaoke machine from Santa and I've been using it more than her.  I'll do my best to recall the precious memories of that day.)

I am positive these three children are the most adorable children that ever could have been brought into my life.  God must have really loved me and Jim to gift us with these precious little people. Beautiful too. :)

 

 Adorbs!

Even thought I told Jim, oh, about 100 times to not get me anything big, he broke the rules and ended buying me (us) a pressure washer.  I do have a special place in my heart for pressure washers.

Yes, that is genuine excitement over a pressure washer.  What can I say?

The grandparents and great grandparents came over.  Grandpa and Grandma are 91.

 

This was a pretty good picture representing the genuine mess we had in the living room.  I'm thinking we'll have a different plan for next year.  And just one more picture documenting me in yoga pants.  Who-da-thought those things would be so comfortable?

We did all the traditional activities like go to Candle light service on Christmas Eve, leave cookies and milk out for Santa, spread reindeer food out on the sidewalk and I eventually got in the story of Jesus' birth.  It wasn't at the beginning of all the gift-giving, but it made it in there.

So this year was the year I got a serious hankering for 2 different Christmas trees.  I absolutely adore all the ornaments our kids make and love to look at them all each year and reminisce, but I also love to have and look at Christmas trees with a decorative flair.  I want the kids have their own tree and I'd like to have my own tree.  Is that bad?  We'll see.  It's all a cost thing right now.

Disney at Christmas

Usually we don't get to experience Disney at Christmas time, but Jim ran into a co-worker that needed some quick cash in exchange for 4 tickets and we decided to hop on it.  Whoo hoo!

It was very pretty.  Disney always does it up just right and Christmas is certainly no exception.

Growing the beard and getting ready for our church's nativity to be a Wise Man.

They had just opened up the new Fantasyland addition and here's the view of Belle's castle above.  It's realistically about 20' tall, but the way it was positioned made it look like it was full size far away.

Again, someone got ahold of the camera.

No amount of, "Hey Brandon!  Look at Mommy!  Smile at the camera!" could get him to turn around and stop looking at whatever was behind them all.

Tampa Zoo December

Our 2nd trip to the Tampa Zoo...

Every time I see this picture it reminds me of a story about my brother, Mark.  When Mark was this age, my parents had a rooster that roamed free on the property.  One day my mom recalls hearing a faint sound, but wasn't sure of what it was.  So she went about her business of doing "inside" work.  Minutes later she heard it again, a very faint high-pitched sound, and it sounded similar to "helllllp! helllllp!"  So she decided to investigate.  She looked outside and saw nothing, but something told her to keep looking, this could be serious.  Well just then, from around the corner, was her precious little blond-haired blue-eyed toddler wearing nothing but a diaper, running as fast as he could away from the rooster with the rooster chasing and pecking at him and Mark was yelling, "Helllllp, the rooster's peckin' my butt!!!!!"

Good times.  Good memories I say.

Mi Mamacita...

 

RCS Christmas Program

RCS had their Christmas program.  Mom and Grandma came to watch our little/growing-too-fast girl sing in front of all the adoring fans parents.

She doesn't ever seem like she's nervous before and after a show like this, but during it she does this cute thing with twirling/scrunching/wadding up her dress that suggests otherwise.

Her brother.  Hmmmm.  Love that kid.

Um, he gets a little restless.  Sometimes.  Like after 5 minutes of  attempting to sit still.

So we, meaning his father and I, resort to desperate attempts and tactics to keep him entertained.

Like, give him the camera.

 

This usually will prolong the attempt at "sitting still" for another 10 minutes or so.

And we usually get some entertaining photos.

He enjoys looking at the pictures that he's just taken.

And admiring the results.

Sometimes we see a little more of him than we were expecting.

But as long as he's quiet and not destroying something, we're okay with it.

Ahhh, the beauty of the Christmas season.