Ok, really? That's not very neighborly.

You would think that being full of pregnancy hormones and happiness that I would find all children wonderful.

I don't. I am great with kids, I know how to handle them, but when it comes to children of the general population, I'm not usually a fan. When I go to a restaurant or to the store, I just want to avoid children, because let's face it: the majority of children we see in public aren't well behaved.

Well, not the ones that you remember. I am only capable of remembering the heathens of the universe.

I moved into this apartment complex in August of 2009, and Travis moved in after we got married that December. Until about 2-3 months ago, we had the same next door neighbors from day one, and they were awesome. What made them awesome? They were quiet. It was a mother and her two boys, and later I think she got married or got engaged or something, because a guy moved in. Even then, they were remarkably quiet and to themselves, which is what I like in a neighbor. I can't think of a single time that I was bothered by any noise coming from their apartment.

Fast forward to a few months ago when my old neighbors moved out, and the new neighbors moved in.

About a week or so after I noticed that we had gotten new neighbors, I was driving through the parking lot to our garage and was frustrated when there was a kid riding a bicycle slowly in THE MIDDLE of the road-thingy. He turned, saw that there was a car behind him, and continued riding in the middle. Of course, I was tempted to speed up and hit him, but in fear of criminal punishment, I opted to just be patient.

Did I mention there are sidewalks ALL OVER our complex that he could have been riding on? Because there are.

There have been many instances similar to this, where he's just playing in the road, riding his scooter, etc. What's crazy to me is that as long as I have lived here, there have always been a good number of kids near us, and they all know that when a car is coming, move out of the way. They're just smart like that.

Then the other day, we took Ethan down to the pool, and after a while, the kid next door and a friend came down to the pool, threw their toys in the water and then sat to eat a snack of some sort. We had brought down some toys for Ethan as well, and we didn't mind that other kids were playing with them, because the other children were normal. When my neighbor-kid (who is like, 10) got in the pool, get grabbed Ethan's blow-up boat (that is intended for small children) and jumped in and he and his friend started fighting with it, etc. My solution to the problem was to just steal neighbor-kid's watergun, but I again, decided to be an adult and not steal from a child.

That brings me to today. To provide visual aid, here is the front of our apartment:

The garage on the left, the front door next to it and the window on the left are all a part of our apartment. The right garage, door and window are all for our neighbors.

If anyone is my friend on Facebook, you may recall seeing this update:

After I posted that, I grabbed my pillows and got comfortable on the couch, popped in a DVD and was ready to fall asleep.

Then the banging started. At first, I thought it my upstairs neighbors, as their stairs are on the other side of one of the walls in our living room, so I occasionally hear thudding, but then I realized it wasn't them. The thudding was lasting too long to go just up or down the stairs.

Then I realized it was coming from next door. I laid on the couch, trying to ignore it, and the banging continued. I finally decided I was hungry anyway, so I got up, and started to eat lunch, and the banging was still happening intermittently. It was kind of like, "BANG. BANG. BANGBANGBANG..........BANG. BANG.......BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG" it was seriously driving me nuts.

Then I turned into that neighbor. I opened the front door, only to find it was that freakin' kid from next door that I can't stand banging on his own front door, gave him a dirty look and came back inside to finish my lunch.

Then, it stopped. And I was so happy. Of course, right as I was finding my peace and happiness, the banging started up again. I had been texting my best friend, Kim, back and forth about how I was ready to beat the crap out of this kid for interrupting my exciting nap, and I told her I was going to go out there, politely ask him why he was banging on the door, and if he was locked out, (his family's vehicle is there) offer for him to use my cell phone to call his parents and ask them to unlock the door...afterall, maybe they're napping too, and completely deaf. Who knows.

Then I heard the lawn people and their blower right outside my front door, so I had to wait for them to go away before I could go outside to handle the nuisance child, and when I did, he was gone.

Next time, I'm just going to start banging on my walls, turning my television/music all the way up and hollering (to myself, I guess). If they were to knock on my door and ask why all of the noise, I'd probably just say, "Oh, can you hear that? My bad."

In short, I can't stand the kid next door. We're going to have a long summer coexisting in this complex together.