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Saturday, September 30, 2006

Our New Additions

I am quite excited to announce that we added to our family yesterday. Although we felt complete as a family of seven (2 parents, 2 boys, 2 cats, 1 dog) we decided that we had enough love for more. With that in mind, we welcomed the newest members of our family. They’re tiny and cute and there are 28 of them. TWENTY-EIGHT?!! That’s right, we finally got the ants for my…. I mean my son’s… ant farm.

My older son (OS) received an ant farm for his birthday. While he was very excited about it (regardless of how accurate his understanding may have been regarding who was coming), I was the one who pouring through pages reading up on the lives of ants. I placed my order first thing the next day. Every day since then , I have eagerly awaited the arrival of the mail. Apparently there must be a shortage of ant catchers, because it has taken almost exactly a month for the ants to arrive via the USPS. They arrived in a tiny plastic test tube in a very small brown envelope. Not wanting OS to know that the top can come off the ant farm, I waited until he was in bed and then set it up. I fastened the top with several pieces of scotch tape to prevent OS and his older sisters Chief UnMouser and Assistant UnMouser from bothering their newest siblings.

Our ant farm is made by Antworks. Instead of having sand, it has some funky astronaut gel in it. Apparently after 24-48 hours we will see evidence of tunneling. In the meantime, they are just like my other kids (2 legged and four legged) in that they seem to be going to the beat of their own drum. I followed the directions and made two 1 inch holes and two ½ inch holes in the gel with the provided stick to begin the tunnels for the ants, but instead of following these pre-made tunnels, they are opening space down the side of the ant farm where I did not make the tunnels. What can I say? My husband swears he’s seen the ants picketing for union rights and two of the ants have been marching around with signs demanding a 40 hour work week.

I now find ant farms so fascinating, I was curious if other people had blogged about them. Apparently, it’s not a popular blogging subject. I wonder why? Just kidding. I did find out that a company called Bandai is releasing a virtual ant farm in Japan this November. No, I swear I’m not making this up. I know there’s so many inventions that we need in life, cure for cancer, AIDS, better recycling, virtual ant farms…Oh, wait, thank goodness someone has invented something to solve one of the world’s leading problems. Apparently it’s being marketed as a desk accessory for businessmen so they can watch the virtual ants tunneling. Should I dare to even wonder why it’s not being marketed at businesswomen too? Does anyone else find it weird that instead of having a picture of loved ones, a fun computer game, or a nice plant that someone would have a VIRTUAL ANT FARM on their desk? That said, as much as I like my son’s ant farm, it is better for someone to have a virtual than a real ant farm in the office. A real one might turn away clients.

In all seriousness, as an animal lover, it’s nice that you can see all the benefits of an ant farm without having real ants in it. That being said, our ants look really happy. It’s an all you can eat gel ant food buffet in there.

A. Elliot’s Lessoned Learned:Ant farms, whether real or virtual, can be an entertaining diversion.



Ant Farm
Front ViewSide View
Front View of Ant FarmSide View of Ant Farm

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Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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