If you give a mouse a cookie, I'll hate you forever...

So we live in New York City, a very old city. This means we live with an occasional mouse in the house. It's not a cute thing, like in the children's book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, " in which the mouse is your friend. Usually, it is cleared up by trap and you move on. Well, not so, this time. During the holidays, several of our days that should have been filled with relaxation was actually full of stress and strife due to some mice that decided our pantry was their all night buffet.

Long story short, after moving EVERYTHING out of the pantry, throwing out 75% of the food (whether or not there was any evidence of mice - for the mere thought that those nasty feet touched anything that would ever enter into my family's mouth was worth rebuying everything), and disinfecting and cleaning the floors and walls and shelves - we found the entrance of the mouse lair. It's been taken care of and subsequent calls to the super have closed up two more holes we discovered.

All this to say that I have been a crazy woman around this house lately. Meaning what? I clean constantly, I check in corners constantly, I'm mumbling to myself about those darn nice all day long. I'm paranoid. So this leads into two stories that involve that kid cute named Brandon.

Story number 1. Ryan was out of town last week for several days. During the time he was gone, I made the super come over again to check more potential places for mice. I, also, cleaned like a mad woman (mad in both anger and in craziness). So every second of the day, I'm cleaning out a corner or closet or something. I still have kids, so I'm doing this in between getting them fed and such. If Brandon came close to the area I was cleaning, I would anxiously tell him to get out of there, "No, No, No, Brandon, I'm cleaning mouse poo!" Or if he was poking around a corner I was paranoid might have been a mouse's walkway, I shriek for him to get up and get out of there, "No, No, No, Brandon, yucky mouse!" Needless to say, with dealing with this mouse stuff, being sick and having no help from Ryan, who was out of town, I was probably pretty grumpy sounding.

Brandon still doesn't say a lot of words though he uses the ones he knows in multiple ways. He, also, makes up signs for things that are commonly used in his daily life. When Ryan got home, he was catching up with Brandon and asking about everything that happened while he was gone. Brandon started growling, which is not uncommon. He actually growls quite regularly imitating, a dinosaur or monster or lion. He can be quite intimidating as he has scared a few kids. So, Ryan naturally asked him if he was being a dinosaur and Brandon said "no." Are you being a monster? A lion? An animal? Both getting resounding, "No!"

Finally, Ryan asked Brandon, "Then what are you?" to which Brandon answered, "MOM!" Ryan asked him, "What does mom say?" And Brandon said "No, No!"

So, basically, Brandon is telling dad that the biggest thing he wanted to share with him during dad's absence is that Mom growled all the time, telling him "NO!"

Story number 2: Tonight as we were eating dinner, or rather, Ryan and I were eating dinner and Brandon was playing by the table - the funniest thing happened. He found the swiffer mop and was pushing it back and forth on the ground and I asked him if he was cleaning the floor. And he said yes and then touched his bum. I thought he was telling me he had a poopy diaper and asked him if he was poopy. He said no and dropped the swifter mop and did his sign for mouse and then touched his bum and then pointed to the mop.

Aha! I regularly interpret his signs and this was one that was obvious. I asked him "Are you cleaning up the mouse poo?" And he said very proudly, "YES!"

As a side note, during the time I was a maniac cleaning every corner, and Brandon kept coming into the area, I decided to show him what I was looking for and showed him what a mouse dropping looked like. I told him it was mouse poo and it was very gross and bad. "eee!" So, tonight, after cleaning the floor with the swiffer mop and telling us he was cleaning mouse poo, he then pointed to every black fuzz ball he found and made the mouse sign and pointed to his bum.

Thank goodness, none of it was actually mouse poo or mom might have gone on another mad cleaning frenzy. I haven't seen a mouse or dropping in awhile. I am hoping it's been contained and I can become a normal person or shall I say, normal mom!