We saw Jackson smiling and sleeping and walking and running.

Clearly, my aunt is in love.
Not unlike romantic love, baby love is ooey and gooey.
My aunt was relishing every new discovery about this new person in her life, delighting in discovery of his budding personality and quirks and generally lovable traits.
Remember when your best friend had her first real love, or first of many, and every conversation reminded her of something totally cute and sweet that her sweetie said?
This was my aunt with Jackson.

New love, whether romantic or baby love, and maybe even puppy love, is a beautiful thing to witness. It’s fun to see someone shine with that high of the slow and intricate process of getting to know someone, and getting to love someone.

(Did you ever see a cuter baby? Neither has my family. In my clan, we believe in initiating new members to the joy of rubber chickens at a young age).

Travelers beware
Back to the bed bugs, which is a much less pleasant topic. However, my aunt is in education, and on this point she is adamant: She wants to educate as many people as possible.
Apparently, bed bugs are becoming more of a problem in America, and throughout the world.
My aunt is among those in the statistics.
She had her recent run-in with the vermin after staying in a hotel.
My aunt isn’t cheap, and unless there is something I don’t know about her, she doesn’t stay in cheap hotels.
But after a recent stay in a decent hotel, she carried home bed bugs.
You can track down many dramatic stories via the Internet, if you’re interested. But apparently bed bugs are real and they want to eat you.
We didn’t hear about them for a couple of generations because society pretty much knocked down the population in the 1940s and 1950s when the country was gung-ho on using DDT, which has been banned in North America.

Like many people, my aunt started getting mysterious bumps on her body and thought she had a skin irritation. It took her a while to figure out the culprit.
That makes sense, because who hears about bed bugs except in long, sad stories about poverty such as Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes?”
The process to get rid of bed bugs is fairly detailed, and my aunt is lucky because she has hard-wood floors throughout most of her house. The bugs are attracted to breathing (carbon dioxide) and warmth.
She has been using diatomaceous earth dust around the bed and uses rubbing alcohol, which kills them on the spot. They also bought a special plastic cover. Also, bed bugs are killed if clothing is put into a hot dryer.

Getting rid of these things can be an extraordinary process, and my aunt said one estimate was for $20,000 to put a tent around the entire house and spray the heck out of it.
However, as mentioned above, there is a baby in her life and they didn’t want chemicals throughout their house.
Part of my aunt’s current campaign is to help others avoid the whole heebie-jeebie experience.
The easiest way is to inspect the hotel room before unpacking your clothes. My aunt gave us a pretty thorough to-do list. It starts with not putting your luggage on the floor until you’ve checked out the room. Those fold-out racks in a hotel closet should do the trick to keep your bags off the carpet.
Then, take a close look around the room. They like to hide in the edge of carpet, bedboards, between the mattress and box spring. Although you likely won’t see the bugs themselves, you might see tiny bedbug droppings or tiny bloodstains. Yikes.

I phoned my aunt this week to make sure it was OK that I print information about her nocturnal bed-buddies. She said it was fine and we chatted about the upcoming holidays.
My Mom and sis are a little hesitant to plan the holiday at my aunt’s house this year.
However, my aunt ensured us that she wouldn’t allow her gorgeous new grand child to visit if she thought there was any chance he would be nibbled in the night.

I suppose we could always wear disposable clothing at Thanksgiving dinner and ceremoniously burn our clothes on her front porch when we left.
That would not be the first unorthodox holiday tradition in our family.
While chatting with my aunt, she said she and my uncle Lars are not cutting travel out of their lives. However, for some reason their next trip will be a visit to the coast where they will be staying in a yurt.
For some reason that makes perfect sense.

Bed bug links: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13829937
http://bedbugger.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedbug

For a really, really creepy close-up photo of a bed bug, click on the link below ...