Most times thoughout the day I’ve got a smattering of food under Adalyn’s chair. Thankfully I had the forethought to lay a kitchen towel under her seat… and I can just shake it off out in the yard for the chickens so it’s all good…

… but this messy baby eating stage isn’t doing wonders for my housekeeping morale. Help!

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Babies vomit. Mine in particular loves to be at the breast 24/7 which inevitably leads to overeating, which in turn results in an overly full stomach and projectile vomiting. Awesome!

She’s shot vomit everywhere exactly 3 times. Once from her swing on to the floor. Once while cuddling me in bed, it went right down my shirt, arm and all over my side of the bed. Then this morning we were both back asleep after a long early morning feeding when she began to quietly fuss…

Half asleep I was verbally consoling her but had my back to her. She’ll calm down after hearing “you’re okay” or “shhhh, it’s okay”. So, I am consoling her and an explosion of vomit hits my back, my hair and once again soaks my side of them bed.

I shot up, wiped her face, arm and the bed. Made sure she wasn’t choking on vomit. Then I stood there looking like “someone killed my puppy” as N put it while I pondered my next move.

Did I want to lay some receiving blankets down over the wet vomit spot, wipe myself off and lay back down to sleep for a few more hours or was it shower time?

There was warm sour milk dripping from my mop of crazy hair, down my back and also from my left arm. Keep in mind she did this same thing to me the day before and I’ve becoming increasingly sensitive to the sent of sour milk on myself now.

After several seconds of deliberation I choose to shower off and wash the sour milk from my hair. If it hadn’t soaked my hair I so would have opted for sleeping some more but having baby vomit in my hair was just too much for me to ignore, this time.

So, I headed off to the shower at like 5am and thought to myself… “Pretty soon sour milk in the hair will be something I am used to living with, I am just not there YET!”

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We looked a two other home possibilities today and both were basically a waste of time. One was decorated like and also smelled about as good as a nasty no-tell-motel room. You know the cheap indoor/ outdoor carpets in the most disgusting color and the wafting cigarette smoke/ someone died in this place smell?

Yep, that was the first place we looked at. We literally walked through the living room, in one bedroom and we’re ready to get out of there as fast as possible!

The next house was much more expensive and looked much newer and more promising based on the listing photos. Too bad it wreaked of cat piss/ spray at the entryway. The living room was bright and open but the kitchen was tiny with limited cabinets and bad decor. The bedrooms were closet sized and had all sorts of nasty stains on the carpet. Basically it was super tiny and had cosmetic issues. Not worth the $1175 they were asking per month.

So we headed back home feeling defeated. We are scheduled to look at a patio home tomorrow that we suspect we’ll be able to settle on. It’s not as big as we would like but we already know we like the floor plan as we’ve toured other homes on the street with the same floor plan. It is $100 less rent per month than we are paying now and the owner is offering a lease/ purchase option on it. We’ll see if it works out for us tomorrow…

Once we got home from our home touring I began working on a family member/ business owners site. If you look at the photos on his site you’ll see some very nice looking living areas (he remodels homes). Looking at those beautifully finished remodeling projects just makes me hate this house more and more!

Also, we just can’t believe how insanely different homes are here compared to those homes in Arizona that we are used to. Things are just so small and old here and most people don’t take care of their homes so they are also pretty much trashed. In Arizona you can find lots of new construction that is both affordable and also a good investment. Here nothing seems to be worth the asking price within our price range and houses are supposed to be cheaper here!

Oh, we enjoyed watching American Idol that we recorded last night. My old choir buddy Scott MacIntyre was on and he had a pretty good performance, yay! We’ll watch tonight’s recorded episode when N gets off work to see if Scott makes it on to the top 12, I hope he does!

N got the power back on in the bathroom, dining room and kitchen today. He had to completely unwire an outlet just to cut power to the garbage disposal. Cutting power to the disposal was the only way to turn the darn thing off. The disposal is so old it’s wired directly to an outlet as opposed to being plugged in to one and it has no reset switch.

So we’ve undone and taped off all the exposed wires from that outlet and have left the outlet plug disconnected. We have power in all three rooms now (just not in that one outlet). Yay for having power again. Now I can use the dishwasher, washer, dryer and bathroom lights!

Well that is pretty much all we have to report here. I am off to make the blog rounds now. I still have like 40 unread items in my reader and I have a feeling my commenters aren’t showing love because I’ve been such a slacker. Hopefully I can get caught up on blog reading today.

The post Um, did someone die in this house? Man it smells! (Evansville rental home search continues…) appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Anyway, I’ve been tweeting about the supposed critters living in our attic lately. You see we’ve been hearing all sorts of ruckus and we suspect some birds have found a way in there. While the noise is noticeable we’re not worried about animals being able to get in to the attic.

As long as it is a “crappy home” issue we aren’t worried about dealing with it. As far as we are concerned it is the landlords responsibility to fix holes in the attic to keep the wildlife out and if they don’t care about possible damage we don’t care either. It’s not our house! (We’re still waiting for word back about the pre approval too).

Unfortunately, on Saturday morning when N awoke to make the coffee he found our cats curiously sitting on the kitchen counter staring at the kitchen wall. He thought nothing of it and shooed the cats off the counter since counters and table tops are off limits to them.

While he is waiting for the coffee to brew he hears this scrambling and scraping coming from inside the wall, the cats hear it also and jump back up on the counter to see what the noise is all about. Apparently whatever was scurrying around in the attic of Friday has now found it’s way down in to the kitchen wall and was stuck there.

Luckily N is a handyman type of guy who will dive right in and figure it all out if need be… But before I got up I guess N and the cats sat there listening for the critter for a while before dismissing it and going about their daily business. Once I was awake and alerted to the situation I was very sad for the little thing stuck in the wall.

I don’t know about you but listening to a critter scramble and eventually starve to death over the course of several days is NOT my idea of a good time regardless of whether or not the critter is a pet. When N realized how big of a deal the trapped thing was for me he set out to do some investigations and problem solving.

Here is what he found scoping out the attic:

Here is how the rest of the critter situation played out:

And last but not least, here is the happy ending:

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Also, we called a local lender today and are waiting to hear if we are pre approved for a mortgage. We are either buying a home in the next few months or we’ll be hunting for a 2 year rental, either way we are preparing to get out of our current lease. Here is why:

Mold is natural everywhere that is why an outdoor control test is done. See all the black mold with a spot of white and a spot of yellow on the control test?

When you look at the two basement tests you can see much less black colored mold (that is naturally occurring in our area as shown by the test) and more yellow and white looking mold growth that is not present as much outdoors as proved by the control test. It looks to be a sign that we have some additional stuff growing and polluting the air within our home that isn’t abundantly present outdoors.

Seems to me like an obvious sign that the air quality within the home is worse than the air quality outside the home, what do you think?

Oh and it’s been raining for less than 24 hours and our basement is filling with water again. Took some more photos to document it all for our landlords.

Now we are having majorly high winds and rain. The power is flickering and turning on and off. I better get off the computer now. Keep your fingers crossed for us and subscribe to this blog so you’ll be the first to know when we share our Tater Tot news!

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