Tag....I don't want to be it anymore

It's been a crappy kind of week here in the Mooers / Maguire household.  Mike was laid off from his job on Saturday morning with no severance, no warning no nothing just a "we're going in another direction" speech.  We had JUST begun to climb out of the maternity leave hole of debt that we were in and now we are dumped back into the hole, this time titled "unemployment".  It sucks, I want to cry, but that really wouldn't help anything, besides Erik does that enough.
The sleeping arrangments are killing me, in fact right now Erik is crying in his crib and it's all I can do to sit here and listen to it.  It's like he knows we are up and he wants to be up and if not up then asleep in our arms only and no where else.  He used to like his crib - then he hit 5 months last week and WHAM suddenly his crib is a torture chamber and we're the meanies putting him in it. 

We had to get a cat "tent" for the crib because we have one very weird cat who is very attached to Mike and so she likes to be close to anything Mike is and that means the baby so she used to jump into the bed with the baby and would sleep at his feet.  This worried me but I couldn't keep her out despite water squirting , yelling nothing worked. So we ordered this tent thing from E-bay with lots of doubt.  It was a bitch to put together and I had my doubts that it would work, but that first night as I lay down to sleep I watched the cat jump from our bed heading into the crib. She hit that tent (which I expected to buckle immediatly under her weight) and bounced like a flying rubber band across the room.  I seriously laughed out loud out of shock.  She hasn't tried to get into the bed since, but I wonder now - is it scary for Erik?   Maybe it's too scary for him, or is he just smart because when I go and let him know that I am still here when he is crying he blows raspberries, smiles and kicks his feet as if to say.."Ha ha Mommy two points for me! Fooled Ya!"  I walk away he crys, I come back he laughs.  He falls asleep in my arms and I put him in the crib and he wakes up as soon as he hits the mattress, when I pick him back up he's out cold in my arms, lay him down, awake, pick him up asleep............tonight I tagged Mike and told him he was it, my turn was over.  That was an hour ago - Erik is now happily playing on the living floor with his toys while Mike is trying not to fall asllep in a chair and I know Erik is thinking "I SO have these two exactly where I want them".  Erik wins tonight, maybe parents will win tomorrow night. Oh Lord please let us win a couple times a week.

Here's a pic of the crazy cat keeper outer.