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Thursday, December 09, 2021

A spider story

Warning #1: We hung up our stockings for our Family Home Evening activity on Monday and the kids pointed out that we have enough stockings to clothe a very big spider. 

I hope we never have a spider quite that big in our house!

Warning #2: On Wednesday my sister shared this joke over our family group chat:

There are some big differences between Iran and Iraq. For example, Iran—everyone is terrified of spiders. But Iraq—no phobia. 

And now for my story, which is about spiders (consider yourself duly warned):

In the wee hours of the morning, just as the sun was beginning to peek above the horizon, I was up nursing Phoebe in bed. We've been practicing side-lying position, which is a position suggested to help baby regulate nursing flow but which Phoebe is incredibly bad at (which is why we've been practicing it). Whenever we try it she ends up with milk spraying out her nose. I'm sure this is terribly uncomfortable for her. 

Honestly, sometimes I feel so bad for my babies. Like, how terrifying to have to plug your whole mouth onto a hose to eat and just, like, once the hose turns on you have to swallow whatever comes out, no matter how fast it comes out—you better just get gulping! And even when you want to stop eating the hose just keeps on churning out food, filling up your mouth faster than you could ever imagine swallowing and...

My babies always end up coughing and spluttering.

Side-lying doesn't seem to help poor Phoebe regulate the flow, so she ends up with milk coming out of her nose. But I assume that if we keep practicing she'll get better at it. Maybe.

Anyway, we were peacefully lying in bed, nursing away, when I saw—in the early morning glow—an eight-legged creepy crawly crawling up my leg. 

"Andrew," I whisper-shrieked as I whacked him a few times. "There's a spider on me!"

He groaned and looked where I was pointing at my hip—that spider was getting ever closer—and then he grabbed the blanket and kind of whipped it toward the foot of the bed. "There."

"I am not satisfied," I whisper-hissed. "There's still a spider in our bed."

He groaned and got up to walk around to my side of the bed to check for the spider. He folded the blankets back on top of me layer by layer to check for the spider. "It's not here," he said.

"It's somewhere," I whisper-lamented.

He shuffled back to his side of the bed and was crawling back in when I saw on Andrew's back the ghastly silhouette of...a spider.

"IT'S ON YOUR BACK!" I whisper-yelped. 

"What?!" he actually yelped. "Get it off!"

"I'm feeding the baby!" I said.

I did start to unlatch her so I could help him, but he jumped out of bed much faster than I could/did and quickly shook the spider off his shirt. When it dropped to the floor he grabbed it with a tissue and that was the end of our friend the spider...who Andrew suspects had been in bed with us all night because he distinctly remembered being disturbed by a tickle in the middle of the night. He told himself it was the curtains...but he was pretty sure it wasn't the curtains. 

My biggest question, though, is how/why did the spider end up on his back?!

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