AAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I really don't intend to devote my entire blog to Carolyn, but she always has something up her sleeve to make me take notice. Usually it is her cuteness, her big chocolate brown eyes, freckles, and sweet grin, knowing if she turns on the charm she can weasel anything out of me. Today it was an earwig.

I was checking my e-mail a bit ago when she walked up and says, "Mommy, theah's something in ah house." (Sorry, I just have to try to write the cute way she talks. Translation: "Mommy, there's something in our house.") I turned to ask, "What is?", but before I can even take a breath to get it out I see an earwig crawling up her arm while she tries to keep it somewhat under control, but if you know anything about earwigs they are kind of fast and not very controllable. Then I took a really BIG breath (i.e. gasp!), and remembering an experience when my cousin, then about 2, walked in to his mother carrying a snakeskin very happily until his mother, my aunt, screamed and reacted very frightened, so he suddenly realized that it must be something he should be scared of too and would no longer touch it or get near it, even though we all know a snakeskin is perfectly harmless unless your 2 year old happens to wander in the house with one catching you totally off guard... So yah, that memory flashed through my mind and I just screamed inside instead of outloud and drawing on depths of calmness and using a really fake calm voice I said, "Oh look honey! You found an earwig! Doesn't he look neat?" By then he had succeeded in falling off her arm and was again running around on the floor, so again fakely calm, not wanting him to run under anything but again not wanting to make her afraid of it by freaking out or just squashing it (after all, she is kind of a bug lover) I said, "Let's get a nice big piece of paper and help him go back outside!"

I quickly got him to crawl on the paper, then headed for the back sliding glass door, all the while flipping and turning the paper so he wouldn't crawl off or crawl on ME, heaven forbid, because then the scream would most assuredly escape. Unfortunately, the blinds and door were closed, and I had to flip/turn the paper with one hand and scramble for the blind cord and door handle with the other, eyes always on the earwig. I finally got the door opened and went to fling him outside just as he succeeded in escaping the paper. He was back to the floor and on the run. Before I could get my paper to him again, Carolyn just reached on down, picked him up, struggled with him for a couple seconds while he tried to get away, then very calmly set him down outside. "Quick Mom! Close the doh-ah (door) so he can't get in again!" Whew! Our home is again safe, thanks to the bravery of my 3 year old, my knight in shining armor. Only, she was wearing a pink ballet outfit.