Rat-ical Happenings

The Nation household has stayed very busy lately with all sorts of various activities from doctors appointments to playing outside.

Oh and also we had an unidentified rodent crawl into our bedroom wall and die.

If you don't wish to hear all the gory details, I highly suggest you stop reading now because this is a story that is just dying to be told. No pun intended.

During my week home with Amelia, I heard what sounded like something scurrying on our roof. Our apartment is on the 2nd floor of a 2 story complex and we have a fireplace. I kid you not I could not stop visualizing the chaos that would ensue when this raccoon (in my imagination, that's what it was) scurried it's way down the fireplace and was running loose in our apartment.

But after a few days, the scurrying noise stopped and the unidentified rodent was nothing more than a memory.

That is until Chris said to me one day, "Do you smell that? It smells like old farts."

I can't make this stuff up. I'm married to the Poet Laureate of Dogwood Lane. (Name that movie!)

Although I was certain the source of the smell was not in fact "old farts" I appeased him by washing the sheets anyway. I told him that I thought the smell was from the vacuum cleaner. I had been using it so much lately thanks to a certain little girl with an unhealthy attachment to it, I thought I may have overheated it causing a strange burnt lingering smell.

We were both so naive.

After a few days of living with this strange smell that was without a doubt becoming increasingly worse with each passing day, I finally remembered the sounds of the feet running on our roof (or so I thought). With horror and disgust, I told him I think some rodent or animal may have crawled up and died in our apartment.

I called maintenance the next morning and they came to our rescue, cutting this gigantic hole in the wall of our bedroom and searching for the source of the smell o' death.

*Warning this next sentence is truly horrific, so feel free to skip ahead. Don't say I didn't warn you.

They found the source. They weren't able to tell us what kind of animal it was because the body was so badly decomposed already. As soon as they took it outside wrapped in the insulation from the wall, flies immediately swarmed the insulation.

Can you say GAG?

So needless to say, we are all living in much happier times now that our apartment is free from the smell of decomposing rat or raccoon or whatever the heck decided to make our bedroom wall it's final resting place.

It's hard to smoothly transition from a story like that, but there are plenty of other rat-ical (sorry, had to) things going on in the Nation household, that I have to share.

Amelia had her 15 month check up on Friday. I always look forward to seeing how much she's grown and hear if she is hitting all of the developmental markers for her age.

So as we all know our little missy is one tiny tot. She's only in the 3 percentile for weight! The doctors aren't concerned about her size, because she has always been petite, but she continually grows at a normal rate. The doctors predict that she will be in the 3 percentile range until she's in middle school when she'll probably hit a growth spurt. Apparently, this is pretty common.

Though she be but little, she is fierce!

She did have a growth spurt in height going from the 27 percentile to 45th! Long and lean, that's my girl!

She had to have 2 shots this visit, and she handled them like a champ. Although, I have to admit, it is getting more difficult to watch her get the shots the older she gets. The looks she gives me like I have betrayed her trust and let some stranger hurt her just breaks my heart.

So to counteract the mean old mommy who made her get shots at the doctor, I made sure that we had lots of fun this weekend so she could forget all about it. We went on lots of walks outside in the stroller which she LOVES.

And since our outside space is limited to a small balcony, I had to get creative with some water fun during the warm weekend. I pulled out a few bowls of water and some bath toys and just let her make a big wet mess splishing and splashing everywhere.

We are in full on house-searching mode, and I can't wait for her to have an actual big backyard and baby pool to play in. But for now, she doesn't know any better and she thought the bowls of water were the best thing since sliced bread.

Between our bowls of water on the deck and dead rodents in walls, I'm pretty sure we could be the punchline to some sort of 'ya might be a redneck' joke.