neighborhood friends

Up until the last week, our new apartment has been working out really well. For one thing, Oliver loves the grassy lawn, the neighbors' dogs and parakeets, and the empty pool that we refer to as Oliver's giant playpen in which does laps on his "beep beep" (the name of his car). He also has a favorite hole that he loves to throw rocks into and take them out again. Last week a Venezuelan neighbor moved in next door. She has a Venezuelan friend with an 11 month who comes to visit so often that at first I thought all three of them lived there. Kellen, the 11 month month old, has surpassed all the other cool aspects of our new apartment for Oliver at the moment. Whenever Kellen is around Oliver runs around in circles chanting "niño bebé," baby boy. The neighbors asked me if Oliver is hyperactive! And I can see why the ask, seeing as Oliver practically goes wild everytime Kellen comes to visit.

The old bad part about our new apartment are a few unwelcome visitors as of lately. That is RATS! Over the past week, I saw a rat on two occasions in our house. The first time Jaime scared it out. And the second time, I reached into the cabinet below the sink to grab some cleaning liquid and without knowing it scared a rat out! The second time, I told the grounds keeper right away about the rat. He told me to keep the door closed or it will keep sneaking into our apartment. So I closed the door and continued to clean when low and behold I saw the rat, a little one at that, eating right in front of our apartment in broad daylight. So I opened the door shoed the rat away with my broom and then yelled for Alfredo, the grounds keeper. He came running over and stepped on the rat till it was dead!

I'm still not happy about the fact that I think the rats our living under the stairs in a storage shed right outside of our apartment. Alfredo is supposed to throw in a poisoned tortilla in there for them to snack on, so hopefully that will be the end of them. If not, we're willing to move to the second floor. I'll keep you posted on the rat situation. For the moment, I'm just trying not to think about them too much. I tend to get a bit too carried away, you know, one thought leads to another and pretty soon I'm sitting around worrying about the Bubonic plague, rats nibbling on our toes, etc.