When my oldest son Ben was born, I didn’t know any nursery rhymes. Instead, on those many, (many) sleepless nights, I would would rock him back to slumber singing Beatles songs, Patsy Cline and my personal favorite: House of the Rising Sun by The Animals.
By the time Sam joined the family a few years later, I was more prepared when it came to the musical preferences of infants and was well versed in the traditional baby melodies.
Now that he’s 2, he sings them along with me.
At first his favorite was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star — and it was adorable. For weeks he would excitedly point out every star he saw — be it on a flag, on TV or in a book.
He treasured his little found trinkets that had stars on them, we pasted glow in the dark stars on the ceiling in his room, everywhere he went he carried around a pink Post-it note on which I had drawn a star with a blue Sharpie.
His second birthday was star-themed: a task made all the more easy because it fell close enough to the Fourth of July that “star” party stuff was everywhere.
Unfortunately, as cute as it was, it didn’t last and Sam has moved on to a new lullaby in which to focus his obsession: The Itsy Bitsy Spider.
Let’s just say that I am less than enthusiastic with his choice …
You guys, I don’t like spiders. At all. And now they’re everywhere.
There’s little plastic spiders scattered on the floor, there’s giant rubber tarantulas lurking in toy boxes and there’s drawings of spiders taped up on the walls and on my fridge.
I’m surrounded by them and my kids think it’s funny how much it creeps me out.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve let out a yelp because I’ve been caught off guard: I opened a drawer in my kitchen last week and jumped back about two feet because there was a (plastic) spider laying in wait on my wooden spoons. The day before, I was sitting on the couch and saw one out of the corner of my eye. I threw my phone at it and ninja-rolled onto the floor before I realized it was fake.
My house is thoroughly booby-trapped with these little eight-legged monsters and I am in a constant state of near-hysteria.
But the worst was yet to come.
On Friday, I was in Powdersville shooting the Liberty game and was messing around on my phone during half-time. I was playing on Facebook when I saw a particularly disturbing post by my husband: a photo of the three of them and their “new pet” — a giant spider in a jar.
Nope.
Now usually, I’m pretty lax when it comes to stuff I will and won’t allow but live spiders is way on the other side of my little line in the sand.
I immediately sent a flurry of angry texts to my husband prohibiting him from bringing it inside and threatening divorce if he did.
In hind-sight, I may have slightly over-reacted — but you didn’t see this thing. It was one of those massive yellow and black spiders that spin the big zig-zag down the center of their webs. This thing was lethal.
OK, I just Googled it and apparently they’re not “lethal” but still …
When I got home that night “Charlotte” was still there in her jar but thankfully enough not inside the house.
I convinced my husband to let her go the following morning and still get the heebie-jeebies thinking about it crawling around in my yard somewhere.
Had they brought it inside we all know what would have happened: the kids would swear up and down that they would never remove the jar’s lid and then at the first available moment, they totally would remove the jar’s lid. The death-spider would escape and I would have had no choice but to burn the house down, be arrested for arson and spend the next 10 years in prison.
Ugh … Why can’t he just go back to liking little twinkling stars?
