Battle of the Birds: Burnetts 1, Birdmites 0

We've had some recent drama at our house which has delayed me posting until today. Have you ever heard of birdmites? Well, apparently birds carry mites similar to rats and when they nest near or in your attic, you can get them. Fortunately, the birdmites usually only choose one host which happened to be me...no joke. I kept waking up at night feeling like things were crawling all over me and I was getting serious amounts of bites on my legs and none of the boys in my household were feeling anything. Brent thought I was going crazy. Once I had over 30 bites, I decided something was seriously wrong and started doing some research. We discovered that we had several birds nesting in our rafters and put two and two together. Welcome to home ownership!!! Brent spent several hours putting new screens up to keep the birds out, set off a few bug bombs and sprayed our house inside and out. I deep cleaned our house several times. I would wash the bedding and towels every day, give myself an epsom salt scrub-down twice a day and bleach the tub every day. I would also like to add that you could eat out of my window sills right now but I'm sure that won't last long!
Fortunately, my mom came down for a few days so I could concentrate on cleaning and now it's been over a week without a single bite. And we also don't hear the birds scratching in and around our attic anymore. Yes!!! If you've never had fleas or mites or bedbugs, I'm not sure you can truly imagine the horror of trying to get some sleep at night when you are feeling the creepy-crawlies and then the pinch and the hot burning and then of course the itching. If mosquito bites are a 5 on the itchiness scale, I would rank mite bites at a 9.5. And they don't go away! They just keep itching and itching and itching! OK, on to more pleasant things.
After we bug-bombed our house, we left for a few days to attend my brother's high school graduation. While we were at home, we put the boys in the pool at Grandma and Grandpa Smart's house so they could have their first swimming experience. It was hilarious! They loved it!

Mom pushing Cole around in the crab.









Mom holding Keith. He LOVED to splash around!









Mom holding Cole and Aunt Sydney holding Keith. Clearly, Aunt Syd is the one with the tan.

Off to Grandma's house!

Cole

Keith

Grandma Smart giving Keith a popsicle. He would have eaten the whole thing if we hadn't stopped him!


Cole going to town on a wooden spoon. I was trying to get him to bang it on the pot but everything now goes straight to the gums. Chew, chew, chew.

Happy Father's Day!

Look closely at Cole's bare foot. When I wasn't looking, Keith snaked Cole's sock and of course began to chew. Brent always told me that raising babies would be similar to raising puppies. To think I doubted him...