Spider-man

Audrey likes to be my shadow and goes with me wherever she can. She likes to "help" me take the trash out to the dumpster or whatever errand I'm doing at the moment. Most of the time it's fun for me too.

Anyway, today we went outside to get the mail. No big deal, just out to the curb and back, right?

We had just finished lunch (Taco Bell, mmm...), and I had JUST put Henry down for his nap. I asked Audrey if she wanted to go with me and she obliged me (of course).

Well, I seemed to have picked up a hitchhiker along the way. We get back into the house and Audrey says to me in a bit of a scared tone, "Dad, there's a spider on you!" and runs off to go get Em.

Now, first thing is that she is almost deathly afraid of spiders for some reason.

(Well, we kinda know the reason. She got bit on the bum a couple of months ago while sitting on the toilet and now says there's a spider in the bathroom almost every morning even before she goes in there to pee).

Anyway, I stand in the entry way til Em gets there and Audrey is already starting to freak out a bit, so I just have to be the brave daddy and pretend that it's no big deal, while being totally still in case there actually IS a spider on me somewhere.

So, Em gets there and as she's looking for it, the poor little critter decides to silk its way to the floor from the bottom of my shorts. Em is bending over to try to get to it and Audrey gives the biggest scream I've ever heard from her.

Now, this wasn't a "I'm trying to get your attention" scream, or "I'm yelling for fun" scream, this was a "I'm about to get eaten by a two-ton tarantula" scream. I mean, her eyes were bigger than Dara's! (No offense Dara, but I just needed a point of reference.)

And, she screamed right into Em's ear. As soon as I saw it on the floor, I squished the little thing which couldn't have even been the size of my pinky fingernail. After that, we had to calm Audrey down and tell her that things usually get worse if you panic.

I think we'll have to work on that for a while, though.