Lord of the Flies

Today the children became quickly enamored with a housefly that they spotted during dinnertime. We were having chicken noodle soup sans the chicken...which is a whole other story.... and they spotted the rather bumbly fly buzzing behind the blinds of the window directly overlooking our dinnertable. Xander claimed him as a pet and immediately named him "Fly-ie." Aria instantly decided that she wanted to name the fly "Beautiful Fly", which upset Xander to no end. I found myself explaining to Aria that Xander had dibs on naming the fly and that our new "pet's" name stood as Fly-ie. I also found myself wondering if I ought to be committed. I was then conned into cleaning up some spiderwebs on the blinds because the kids were so seriously and incredibly worried that a spider would eat Fly-ie that they couldn't focus on eating their dinner. They were literally standing on their chairs everytime Fly-ie bumbled remotely close to the web, hollering and holding their fingers to their lips in fear. Once or twice he snagged a wing on the web, which led to further freaking out and begging me to free him. He wrassled his way out upon which victories my children would cheer loudly. Skyler spotted the spider and suggested that I stab a sharp knife down the crevice to take care of Fly-ie's predator once and for all; a suggestion that made some sense, except that at this point, nothing made sense and I was not about to spider-yucky-up one of my good steak knives. I told Skyler that maybe if the fl- I mean, Fly-ie smartened up a bit and stopped paying the spiderweb visits, we could all just go back to our dinner and not worry about it. He looked at me, frustrated and upset, as if I were some heartless fool and explained as patiently as he could muster, "Mom. Flies only have a memory of about three seconds. He can't help it."
So...for now, Fly-ie lives, lucky thing. Mom:0, Kids:1