War.

We are just about through one of the most trying weeks ever. Last week, E kept waking up with more and more bugbites all over her body. At first, I thought - maybe spiders? Mosquitos from playing outside at school? But it didn't make sense - they just kept appearing. By Friday of last week, she had about 20 bites all over her torso and was scratching until several of them were bleeding. My heart was breaking as she kept waking up in the middle of the night, screaming, "Itchy! Mommy! ITCHY! ITCHYYYYYY!!!!!"

Last Friday, I sent them to daycare so I could get to the bottom of this and do a little housekeeping. I decided to change her sheets and vacuum the whole house. And as I lifted up her mattress to do some vacuuming under the bed, that's when I saw the little bug crawling around on her bedframe. A bedbug.

My skin started crawling. I yelped and tried to vacuum it up. It got away. I shook the frame around and there it was again, and this time I sucked it into the vacuum cleaner with a vengeance. This meant war.

While I put all the sheets in a hot wash, I dragged her little toddler Ikea mattress out to trash and tidyed up the rest of the house, then battled Friday afternoon traffic to get to Ikea in Burbank to get a new mattress. Luckily, our landlord was sympathetic and super-responsive, and sent an exterminator out the next morning to do an inspection. They indeed found some signs of bedbugs in our living room and in the girls' room. As we eagerly waited for them to come back and spray our house with nasty pesticides on Monday morning, E woke up the next day with more and more bites. On Sunday morning, we decided to go to the beach to escape the hot weather and lift everybody's spirit. She came back with more bites. They were in our car too.

I know it's in vogue to be all organic and anti-pesticide, but when bugs are biting your toddler and you have absolutely no control over it, I honestly didn't care what they sprayed on our house and in our car. They could have sprayed Agent Orange all over the place and I probably would have been ok with that. I felt so helpless, watching my poor girl scratch and scratch, miserable and whiny all day long.

The exterminators came on Monday, and today is Friday. E has not gotten any new bites since. The strange thing is that she is the only one who was victimized by these terrible pests - C, who shares a room with her, and whose crib is right next to her bed, was untouched by this whole thing. It still doesn't make any sense to me, except that maybe her eczema was some kind of deterrent to them, and the fact that our crib mattress is a waterproof one that has a sort of vinyl outer cover on it. I have no idea, but hopefully this will be the end of this whole thing.

In the meantime, I have done about 20 loads of laundry this week, washing everything that could be washed in the living room and girls' room in hot water and drying on high heat.  I have washed jackets that we haven't worn in months, stuffed animals, diaper bags, car seat covers, baby carriers, blankets, burp cloths, and everything else possible. And what did I find in one load of laundry as I dumped it onto our bed to be folded?

A dead bedbug. I felt a sinister triumph over it. If this is woman vs. nature, well, this woman is determined to win.