Dorian´s Late Night Ant Attack
Posted on January 6, 2008 - Filed Under Kids, Simple Life |
Last night, I put Dorian to bed, and, as usual, he refused to sleep, asking for water, fussing and carrying on. It´s a normal routine around here, unfortunately. Anyway, he finally fell asleep around 9 and I was going to head to bed myself when I heard bloodcurdling screams coming from his room. This wasn´t just another ruse to get me to come in.
I ran into his room and saw a frightened little boy swatting at his head and face and screaming. Turning up the lamp I saw that he was absolutely covered in ants. Not little black ants like we usually have issues with either, these were red ants, some normal sized, others were those nasty soldier ants with the giant heads and great big pinchers.
The ants were mostly on Dorian´s head and all over his face, crawling up inside his nostrils and getting caught in his hair. I swatted most of them off, but his hair (which is in need of a haircut) was absolutely full of them. To tell you the truth, I thought about asking Irving´s mom to lend me the razor and just giving him a buzz cut right then and there, but I refrained. Instead, I took the poor kid out into the living room and combed all the ants out of his hair and stomped on them. Finally, he settled with a bottle on the sofa to watch Toy Story while I surveyed the damage.
His room had a complete ant highway running around the edge of it and unfortunately his bed was right in the middle of this new freeway. They were running back and forth along the edge of his box spring and when I picked up his stuffies, there were literally hundreds of ants under them. This is something that obviously happened last night because I hadn´t seen a single ant when I put him to bed!
So, after hauling all his blankets, pillow and stuffed animals outside and pouring floor cleaner into the cracks the ants were climbing out of, I decided that there was no way I could let my baby sleep in that room in good concience. I´m sure I wouldn´t have killed them all, and just one that bit him would be my fault, so I moved our bed (Irving had to work last night, wasn´t home until 6 am) against the wall and moved Dante´s crib to another part of the room and took Dorian to bed with me.
This is the first time since Dorian was a newborn that we´ve slept in the same bed and it was . . . interesting. He thought it was a big game, since we often pretend to fall asleep together on the bed. 
He lay there in the dark and reached out a hand to caress my cheek and grab my hand to hold it against his face. It was very sweet. Finally, he fell back asleep and slept soundly until 5 am when he woke up very confused as to where he was!
The ants are now dead, the room has been completely cleaned to erase any sign of the nasties and Dorian will return to his room tonight, but I did enjoy one night of having my little guy cuddle up to me in bed (until he turned sideways and started kicking me in the ribs, but anyway . . . ).
Comments
6 Responses to “Dorian´s Late Night Ant Attack”
Leave a Reply
Oh dear!!! Ants, I hate ANTS!! (except the movie of course…
)
I hope that he is ok now, and that maybe you can suggest it was just a dream/nightmare he had if there is no bite scars of course!
And the sharing of the bed is sweet isn’t it, until they ALWAYS end up sideways and feet into ribs/lower back is not fun!
I hate insects of all kinds now.
Living in a tropical country will do that for you.
Dorian is fine. He wasn´t afraid to go back to his bed for a nap, so I think we´re good.
Oh man, sorry to hear about that! You handled it well, I think I would have panicked more than the kid if I were in your position. Red and soldier ants too. Acck. =(
Oh my goodness! Poor Dorian! You handled the situation so well. I’m especially impressed since you had to do it all by yourself. Did he have any problems from the bites?
Grayson slept with us until he was three, and he still has “sleepovers” with us occasionally. I love it, and he is a great bed buddy (never kicks you in the ribs!) Grant on the other hand, has ALWAYS slept by himself. He has just now gotten interested in sleeping with us sometimes, and he’s a WILD MAN! He’s likely to get turned around and kick you in the face!
There were no complications from the ant bites, weirdly enough. I would have had swollen bumps all over, but Dorian seems to be pretty bug resistant!
We attempted to sleep with Dorian in the beginning because he was born during a very chilly part of the year and there is no indoor heating here. But neither of us would sleep! He´d lay there and stare at me and I´d stare at him and that´s how we´d stay all night long! So, he slept in his crib early on. Dante was never given the chance to see if he likes sleeping with us, he´s only spent a couple of the coldest mornings in bed with us.
oh yeah, we had any issues once or twice. better than tarantulas, which are ramapant in the llano behind the house in MX!
is your house concrete? we’ve been able to keep stuff out with our concrete house.