Random Ramblings

It's a good thing Eric was at the store. A little bit ago, I went to get Bea up from her nap. She had a diaper cover on with crappy velcro, so had one of the fancy diaper covers from a dress over the plain functional one to help keep it together. In between those two covers? A big old spider. Very startling, to say the least. I mean, how the heck does a spider go up her pants and then under some fairly form-fitting elastic to get up there? Especially since this was a fairly large specimen.

My protective inclinations warred with each other for a moment, long enough for rationality to resume, and I used her pants to scoop up the spider to protect both it and me and took it outside. It was really quite gorgeous, a deep red cephalothorax with a cream abdomen. After looking at it for a minute, I let it go and went back in to change her diaper and then identify it.

Turns out it's a pillbug/woodlouse/etc spider, Dysdera crocata (named for what it eats), and it's one of the most commonly found inside spiders in Utah. Odd, because I don't recall seeing one in the house before. The pictures I'm looking at have quite a wide range of colors on the cephalothorax, from brown to red, so maybe I'm just not remembering a more plain brown one. I'm assuming I've seen them outside at some point, though.

Here is the best resemblance to it that I've found. It was a much deeper red, though. Very pretty, as I said, and fortunately harmless. Still, if Bea develops any super powers in the near future, I guess I better look for a spider bite in her nether regions...

Both of the kids have been quite slow at starting to say no. Bea has finally started saying it regularly just the past few days. At almost two, she's a bit younger than Enoch was, but has had him modeling it, so not really surprising. It's led to funny stuff, though.

Today, while Eric was getting them ready for their nap, the kids were wanting to turn the lights on. He told them no, we didn't need them because it was daytime and the sun was out. Then he explained that the sun is a star that's close to us rather than really far away. At this, Bea says, "No!" No matter how much Eric tried to explain, she kept declaring no, even sounding a bit offended about it. I'm not sure why the concepts of the sun being a star or stars being really far away are offensive, but hey, who knows what goes on in the mind of toddlers?

I can't believe in all of that post that I forgot to mention that Bea has stepped into the world of talking. She's been saying it enough that we've decided that go is her first word. She often puts too much of an 'ah' sound in it, but it's definitely go, and if we say it back to her when she's saying it, she gets extremely excited. Klio probably doesn't have much time remaining as the third smartest entity in the house.