of mice and minivans

I was falling asleep one night last week while bottle feeding Tyler, very comfortable and relaxed in the Lazy Boy rocking chair that we bought for just such a purpose, when Laura comes into the room with a spooked look on her face.


"We have a mouse", she said. At the moment I was somewhat still asleep, and the whole idea of there being a mouse seemed preposterous to me, although to be fair I also kept thinking that I was at my parent's house, and that they should deal with it. After waking up fully and accepting the fact that I was indeed my own house, it occurred to me that Laura was serious, and had no interest in letting the mouse remain in the house.


About a half hour later, after corralling and shooing and brooming and various attempts at getting the mouse into a box, we finally encouraged it to leave through an open door. It's funny how this tiny little thing (maybe an inch and a half long) encites dread in people. Maybe it's more the fact that it is not supposed to be inside the house, than the fact that it is a mouse, that got us wound up.


So it was much to my dismay when, after cleaning up mouse poop last night, that I found mouse poop again this morning, and in the same location. As I was thinkng about going to buy a trap, another (or the same) mouse jumped up out of the garbage can and scurried into the recycling bin. After a minor heart attack, I covered the recycle bin with a trash bag and re-delivered the mouse back outside, where it will no doubt go back through whatever hole it is using to get inside my house and proceed to poop all over the place until I realize that I just have to bait it.


Oh, so much fun, having a mouse in the house.



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In other news, we may buy a minivan. Yup. Are you not excited for us?

Ever since Tyler was born, getting him and his car seat in and out of our sedan has been tough on our backs. It's not that we're weak people, it's just awkward because we're tall. So we started talking about replacing the sedan with a SUV some time next year, but never got very serious about it. Then last week, Laura comes to me with the idea of a minivan, claiming that "we'll probably end up with one some day anyhow, so why bother with an intermediate step of the SUV?"

Probably? Anyhow? Really? When did we become a big family? Why do we want to drive such a stereotypical family soccer-event car around? The whole idea made me tweak a little bit.

Then Tyler outgrew his removable car seat. Ok, no big deal, just install the convertable seat rear-facing (because he still isn't one year) and everything will be fine, right? Well, he is so tall now that you literally have to hold him sideways to fit him between the car seat and the roof of the car, then stand him up in the seat, then pull his feet out from under him to get his butt to drop down to the proper location. Long story short, the idea of a larger car is starting to sound marvelous, and suddenly the idea of bypassing something like an SUV to move into something like a minivan is, well, sounding very practical.

Sure, there are only three of us, but some day there might be four. And each of the road trips we've taken lately seems to require the packing of a stroller, a pack-and-play, Tyler's clothes, our clothes, blankets, pillows, toys, hiking backpacks, etc. This stuff fills up the trunk of an Accord pretty fast.

So to summarize, don't be suprised of some day soon we arrive for out visit driving a miniature van.