June 26, 2012 ~ Pie-Duh Phobia

I'm sorry lil man, but it seems I have imparted my fear of spiders on you.

His spider woes begin way back on Friday.

After bathing I put his towel around him and mine around me. He has hooded towels, the kind that are popular for kids right now. Well, he freaked out and tossed the towel from his head as if it were on fire. When it landed on the floor a giant black spider crawled out from the hood. That would be a spider recently trapped bewteen the towel and my lil man's head. Pie-duh! Pie-duh!

Yeah, ok. That spider had to go. No one jumps on my lil man's head and freaks him out without paying for it. Down the drain. Byebye.

Then, there we are camping. Out in the woods, surrounded by nature. Billy noticed a spider hanging out outside of the tent but inside the fly (tent rain cover). It was right above his crib. He freaked out. FREAKED. It was a small spider. I tried to allay his fears and tell him it was just dirt. He wasn't buying it. There wasn't much I could do. I tried to ang the spider off of the tent from the inside, but it was happy taking a nap right where it was. He was NOT a fan.

Bring on Monday morning, T-minus 2 hours getting HFMD. (Hand Foot and Mouth Disease). We go to shower and I remove his lil bathtub and out scurries another big, black spider. Same size as before, larger than a quarter when you include the legs. He was not happy and screamed in the shower, afraid the spider was hiding somewhere, even though a handy shoe dispatched the little sucker.

Nope. Not a fan.

I'm pretty sure that spiders are the most vile creatures on Earth. Prove me wrong, but really, they are other-worldly with their eight-legged freakishness. I hate them. If they are inside, then they must die. Outside, we'll think about it.

Well, today we were outside- the only place he seemed happy, so there we stayed. On the window ledge he noticed a Daddy Long Legs. I thought it was dead. It had been there since the day before and hadn't moved. Well, he wanted me to poke it with a stick and move it away from the sofa. Not a problem. It was dead. Not that I'm afraid of DLL, since they rarely bite and don't mind being held. (Think they don't bite? Ask the Mythbusters on that urban legend!) So, I poked it and it skittered away.

I suppose Moses could have appeared witha burning bush in front of him  and scared him less. I chased that poor unhappy DLL to the other end of the porch and tried to convince Billy that it is the only friendly spider out there. o, he tried to feed it a cracker.

Yes, my lil man tried to feed the spider a cracker. I got him to leave it alone since it was napping, but he really wanted to welcome it with a Ritz. No joke. When I explined that it only ate bugs, he cried. No really, tears. I told you spiders are scary. THEY EAT BUGS!!!

If that's not enough, we watched Tangled today (again). I explained that the bad lady was a meanie- a term I use for bugs and other living things he shouldn't go near. "Meanie? Like a pie-duh?" he asked. Yes, a meanie, like a spider. "Oh. She bites," he declared. Because meanie bugs bite.

Pie-duh phobia. Because they bite- those big meanies.