Cicadas FREAK. ME. OUT.

Did you know that Nashville and much of the south has been hit by a plague of Biblical proportions? No? Well, there are these CRAZY bugs, cicadas, that come every 13 years and there are hundreds of thousands of them. They are called Brood XIX cicadas. You should google them. Seriously. Go google them and then come back. Here's a photo of one that I took on my front porch.
They're about as big as my thumb, from the front of the front legs to the tip of the wing. They don't sting, bite, or do anything else bad except, you guys, they're everywhere. And THEY LAND ON YOU. And their legs are sticky so they can't just be brushed off. They make an insanely loud song (their mating call). It's almost deafening. Actually, we have some musician friends who are working on a new record and they said that they can't record right now because the sound is too loud. They last about 6 weeks and then die, leaving their eggs underground for 13 more years. They came when I was five, they came when I was 18, and here they are again. The next time I come I'll be 44! Math idiots like me, I'll save you the subtraction - I'm 31. I actually think they're kind of interesting. They aerate the soil, they feed wildlife like birds and fish. It's interesting that they grow underground for 13 years. And yet. I experience a crazy revulsion when I think about them. I have such anxiety about them that I couldn't sleep for several nights in the weeks leading up to their arrival. We don't have a garage and I was just trying to picture how I would load up my three kids in the car, fighting them off, everyone (myself included) screaming.
So I did what any sensible person would do: I fled town. Grant and I rented a car and drove through the night to get here. Now, they were around for over a week before we left, but they come out gradually at first so the numbers weren't too bad. The day after we left though, they started coming out in droves. I took a photo of the kids in the car because it was so funny to me - we crammed all three car seats in the back seat of a standard car (a Ford, can't remember the model, but it was the size of a Honda Accord). Carolina's carseat is rear-facing so you can't see her.
They did great. If Finn or Maggie did happen to wake up during the drive (8:30pm to 8am) they would just kind of giggle and go back to sleep.
Carolina woke up twice to eat on the way here and this is what she looked like (taken just before nursing in the front seat, around 1am):
Could she be any cuter?
Grant stayed one day and left the next day in the morning. Poor guy. At the first sign of bugs I just up and take his family away from him. I have to brag on my parents-in-law. I called to ask them if I could come stay for almost 3 weeks (originally I said a month) and right away they said yes! That's right, they were willing to take me and my three wonderful, loud children in for a month. They've been wonderful and my father-in-law even told me today that they aren't tired of us yet :)

We really miss Grant but he is working hard at home and he'll come out in about a week and stay with us for the last week before we return home and he starts a new job! Hooray, Grant!