Tuesday, May 19, 2009

What's eating you?

Because something is eating Bubba. Mosquitoes, specifically. We live in swamp, so we are used to mosquitoes, but these are persistent mosquitoes who snuck into the house somehow. We don't leave the door open, but they sneak in on our clothing, or hurriedly fly in while we are coming or going. I should check our phone bill - I bet while we're out of the house they're making long distance phone calls and eating all of our Easter candy. Stupid bugs.

Bubba seems to be getting the worst of the bites, and they have been bad:

You can't really tell from this angle, but he has a bug bite on his eyelid that made his eye swell almost shut. You can see it better in the photo below:

It was HORRIBLE. He won't keep ice or a cold compress on it (which is really the only thing we can do at this point). Please ignore my messy fridge and my husband's overgrown goatee.


He has about six bites on the back of his neck. They seem to be going down rather quickly, giving me hope that the bite over his eye will settle down just as fast. And yes, he does need a haircut. But it will hurt me a little bit to cut off those curls.

He has another 5 or 6 bites on his torso, and one on each arm. This has all happened inside my house. That makes me feel terrible.

I made a desperate trip to Wal-Mart last night and picked up a couple of indoor pest repellent things that plug into the wall. I'm hoping those will work. And I have become very strict about the opening and closing of the front door or our sliding door. We open the door, dash out and close it quickly again, or vice versa. This morning Bella wanted to check the weather, and she was headed to the door when I said, "That's why we have the internet and the weather channel! Don't open the door!".

This, too, shall pass, I'm sure. As long as I stay vigilant about the doors we should be OK. This is just another reason to add the the already long list of reasons that I can't wait to get out of this apartment. In the meantime, if anyone can offer any advice for...

  • keeping mosquitoes out of your home
  • doing something about mosquitoes once they get inside your home
  • natural anti-itch remedies
  • a way to keep an ice pack or cold compress on a wriggly, stubborn 15-month old

...I would appreciate it. In the meantime we will make do. In an itchy kind of way.

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