Madelyn has been enjoying her library of books lately, and by “enjoying,” I mean, “pulling every book off her shelf and surrounding herself in satisfaction of her literary brawn.”

I try to seize these opportunities as reading moments where she’ll pay attention to a particular story book for a page or two and then go back to pulling off books. I continue to read so she at least hears the vocabulary and cadence, and meanwhile, my inner teacher geeks out at all the synapses sparking in her brain as I develop her brilliance. Or not. Whatever. It can’t hurt.

This morning, Madelyn chose/grabbed the nearest book in reach which was a cute and colorful adaptation of the beloved and classic children’s tune “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” It also happens to be one of Madelyn’s favorite songs and we enjoy singing it all day! She now anticipates the hand motions and all the silly personalized nuances we’ve created together. It’s super cute how she lights up with the first few notes of the song.

So, naturally, when she chose/grabbed the nearest book in reach which was The Itsy Bitsy Spider, I started to sing the book to her. Upon the “Out came the sun and dried up all the rain” lyric, the movement we do is look up at the sky and wave our hands like a car wash worker drying a wet car.

And there it was. THE itsy bitsy spider. On the ceiling. But it wasn’t so itsy bitsy. It was mammoth and I think I could even see hair.

Normally when this catastrophe happens in our household, I am not the spider killer. I don’t kill bugs. It’s not because I have a soul and I feel bad for taking their lives. It’s because when I scoop them up in a tissue or swat them with a shoe, I SWEAR I can feel them wriggling through and burying themselves into my body and laying eggs and then I feel itchy and declare that baby bugs are spawning out of my skin. Yes. I am not the designated bug killer.

But what happens when there’s a dinosaur spider on your beautiful baby daughter’s ceiling and it’s almost naptime? Well, first you think “Eh! I’M not napping in here! Sorry, Madelyn! Enjoy your new pet wooly mammoth spider! Sweet dreams!” But then then you grow balls and your mama bear emerges from your weenie scaredy cat head and you decide you’re going to kill that mother effer.

Because I am president of the Lollipop Guild and cannot reach the ceiling, I dragged a chair from down the hall — GRRRR man power! — and picked up a tennis shoe, took a breath, stood on the chair, almost fainted at the thought of the spider jumping down five inches onto my head and tangling me up in a blast of webbing, and then dragged the shoe across the ceiling to knock the spider onto the carpet.

Yay: The spider was off the ceiling. Boo: OMG WHERE DID IT LAND OMG OMG OMG

I found it. And this, my friends, is irony. The colossal, Herculean spider landed ON the glittered title of the critically acclaimed illustrated children’s book, The Itsy Bitsy Spider.

Its body curled up in a noodly ball and I picked up the book like a pallbearer and brought it to the sink where I turned on the faucet and “down came the ‘rain’ and washed the spider out.”

I felt like a hero. I saved my daughter’s life from the spider and no one got hurt in the process. I am expecting the key to the city any minute now.

Soon after, it was naptime and I was at ease knowing that little baby Madelyn was safe and protected in the comfort of her crib and an uninvaded ceiling (with no shoe streaks on it either, thankyouverymuch).

I’ll never know how the spider got into her room, but if it was through a pathway from the outside, I asked the nature gods to make sure that the enormous, elephantine spider does not climb up the spout again.