Well, the difference in my boys was obvious to me today in regards to a spider. I heard Mitchell down by our front door, talking in the kind of baby talk he usually reserves for Jack, but Jack was with me, so I was curious who he was talking to. I called down to him and asked who he was talking to and he said, "I found a friend spider down here and we are just talking! He's nice! I'm going to pick him up now." He played on the stairs with his new "friend" for 10 more minutes or so. I forgot to ask what became of his new friend - whether he was left to go free or ended up squished on the wall. To tell the truth, I'm not too concerned with it.
Ben was not home for this, but I knew exactly what he would have done, had he found the spider instead of Mitchell. Picking it up would be the last thing he would do, I'll tell you that! We had a conversation about spiders a few days ago, actually, and Ben admitted that he was afraid of spiders and if he saw one, he would be too afraid even to step on it with his snow boots on. "It would be way to scary!"
While they disagree on whether real, live spiders are a friend or foe, they are agreed on scary pictures of spiders on the internet. They regularly ask me to look up pictures of tarantulas and "the biggest spider I can find" and we have even added a new "kiss" to our dozen or so fancy bedtime kisses: the tarantula kiss. Yes, I regularly give my boys a tarantula kiss before I turn the lights out and leave them to their silly nighttime rituals.
