Who's Bigger Now?

Sophie turned 3 on May 7. In a testament to our uncanny inability to plan ahead more than a half hour, we threw a momentous celebration consisting of Sophie, Ben, Josy and myself. The nice thing about being 3 is that birthday expectations are pretty much a blank slate.

She had a blast.

The highlight of the day consisted of a trip to the local bike store where Ms. Sophie got to pick out her very own, first-ever bicycle. A purplish-pinkish girly-girl model with training wheels fit the bill.

Ben proceeded to ask her every couple minutes if he could ride it. "Noooo, Ben!" she'd shout, gripping her new fiets ("feets," or bicycle) with unprecedented determination.

Sophie managed to ride the bike for the entire 10-block distance back home. At first needing a hand on the back for stability. But after 3 blocks, she only needed the faintest touch from a finger on her shoulder for the appearance of reassurance.

On the last block before home, I managed to surreptitiously remove my finger from her shoulder. Almost without knowing it, Sophie was riding her "big girl" bike all by herself.

Not to be outdone, upon arrival at the house and after further refusals by Sophie to let him take her new vehicle for a spin, Ben proclaimed that he wanted us to take the training wheels off his bike.

We were pretty sure he was ready. For the past couple months, he'd been riding his bike in such a way that his training wheels wouldn't touch the ground, except for going around corners. This often resulted in him swerving unpredictably in persistent efforts to keep the training wheels aloft while going over uneven ground. And, on this day, after his fifth or sixth request, we decided he was serious.

Ben took to his training wheel-less bike like a fish to water. Nearly fell a couple times when mounting the bike or coming to a stop. But otherwise looked like he'd always been riding in this "big boy" way.

I took him for a short ride up the neighborhood canal to check out some wild ducklings that had just hatched. We passed Josy and Sophie out on the sidewalk. From the look on Josy's face, I could tell that Sophie had been fussing. It was well past her naptime.

Only the joy of riding her new bike had kept Sophie going. But even the smooth sidewalk had become a rocky road as Sophie fought increasing fatigue while struggling to keep her balance.

That said, the power of sibling rivalry knows few bounds. Sophie took one look at Ben on his bike and said, without hesitation, "I want my training wheels off, too!"

Bored of the Flies

There's only a handful left. Bodies are scattered everywhere. Tiny, stiff reminders of the buzzing annoyances that have plagued our ground floor kitchen/dining room/living room all week long.

It all began last weekend. We started noticing an unusual number of flies indoors. The weather had been sunny and warm for weeks, and we chalked up the flies' presence to having left our windows open without screens.

And then their numbers started to rise. Dramatically.

Monday, Tuesday - Maybe a couple dozen, mainly on the south end of our ground floor. Congregating near the large foot-to-ceiling window. No obvious sign of where they were coming from. No rotting fruit on the counter. No open food containers. No signs of them in the cupboards or pantry. A mystery. Rains had returned, deterring us from opening the windows and doors to shoo the rascals outdoors.

Wednesday - Our housecleaner arrived and was totally grossed out. Somewhere between 60-80 flies had taken up residence along the southern window and the window of the kitchen door. Her face paled when I asked if she'd mind just vacuuming them up. Bless her heart, she went ahead and "hoovered" them, sucking up dozens into the cramped dark coffin of the vacuum bag, buried alive.

Friday - Desperation began to set in. Despite the thorough housecleaning, the problem had gotten worse. Much worse. Literally, more than 100 flies covered the windows and curtains.

Two school friends of Ben came over to play. They raised more than one eyebrow in amazement at the peppered pattern of flies covering the window glass and curtains. I started mulling over various ways I might explain all this to their mother when she returned to pick them up. I could just see word getting around - "The Eldridges... Nice family. Shame about all the flies, though..."

I called an exterminator, wondering to myself why I hadn't done so sooner. But after describing the problem, he said it was almost certainly due to having a dead animal somewhere under the house or in the nooks and crannies where the heating pipes run. He advised calling a plumber or heating system installer instead.

The exterminator's opinion echoed that of our landlord's father, whom I'd called earlier. And it occurred to me that rather than hire someone to rip up floorboards and trace our heating pipes into the nether reaches of our Netherlands' abode, the better solution might just be a waiting game. After all, there was no smell whatsoever - whatever dead critter was ensconced in hard to reach places was certainly so tucked away that the search would cost an arm and a leg to find it. And the flies just might die off after their maggots had finished devouring the nourishing corpse.

This wasn't an easy decision. The plague had reached nearly Biblical proportions. It was just so disgusting, words can hardly express the feeling of walking downstairs and into the presence of more than a hundred nasty flying varmints.

But fortunately the weather cleared up just enough to open the sliding door of the large window, and the kitchen door. Waving my hands and shouting like a madman, I managed to usher the vast majority of flies outside, to infinity and beyond.

And the strategy seemed to work. By evening, only a half dozen flies could be seen. This morning, they'd declined to one or two.

All the fun of a trip to the garbage dump, but without the garbage, the stench or the price of admission.