However, after this nap, we may have to fallback on career plan B. We are all fighting off a bit of a cold, so I put the kids down for naps, cleaned a little, and then headed to bed myself. Usually, it's Noah who is my screaming waker. He doesn't do mornings or waking up well. I swear the kid's going to be addicted to coffee by the time he's in kindergarten. I'll have to put it in his Thomas the Tank Engine thermos. So when my eyes fluttered open (after a time too short to actually be considered a nap) to the sound of wailing, I rolled over and prayed that he would just get himself adjusted and go back to sleep. As consciousness descended, I suddenly realized this shriek had a distinctly feminine roar to it. And it wasn't a shriek of boredom or hunger or "I threw my paci over the side, but I was very upset to discover it does not work like a boomerang, and now I need it back, please mother come and retrieve it for your sweet little daughter." It was a shriek that said, "that which you fear most in life has come, and it is eating you alive one mouthful at a time." (When the nurses told me I would come to recognize my baby's cries I don't think this is what they meant.)
I bolted out of bed and flew into my daughter's room, still trying to shake the cobwebs from my head. The sight that greeted me was heartbreaking. My baby girl was balled up in one corner of her crib, screaming in terror, pointing wildly at something on the other side of her crib. My eyes followed the direction of her mad gesticulations. There, a black speck against the white of her crib, was a little spider crawling up the railing. I glanced back at Hannah with my eyebrow quirked. "That's it?"
I understand that some people have irrational fears of little things. I just don't. I have rational fears of big things, like sharks. This is part of why I live in a desert. In order to get me here, a shark would have to break out of the Aquarium, mission impossible style, hop on the Trax line to the 54 stop, catch a bus west, cross five lanes of traffic, navigate his way threw a maze of suburbia, pick two locks, and get past my husband (who I imagine, when faced with a shark bent on devouring his bride, would be taking no prisoners). When my little girl lost it over a bitty spider, I really wanted to ask all eighteen months, 23 inches of her where her backbone was.
Grabbing an old, chewed on sock (gosh, it's weird living in this house), I went to smash the poor spider. I would usually find a way to transport it outside, but I thought if I tried that baby girl would start taking hostages. Only when I went in for the kill, it jumped down into Hannah's bed. What had been brink-of-death-screaming turned into almost soundless wailing as she desperately tried to scale the bars of her crib and escape. I quickly smashed the eight-legged terror, disposed of the corpse, washed my hands (because my daughter and her allergies are making me a freak), and returned to my baby's side. She grinned up at me as if she hadn't just been wailing like a banshee, and lifted her arms to be picked up.
"I can't believe you dragged me out of bed for that little thing," I muttered as I snuggled her close. I'll have to get some tighter reigns on my tongue when she's old enough to understand me.
So I suppose warrior princess may still be in the running for career possibilities. However, if she has any designs on being a Mirkwood elf princess, battling the spawn of Ungoliant, she's going to have to man up a bit.
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