Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Monster in the Closet and Other Terrifying Tales

Happy Halloween!

Spooky cookies from my knitting group Halloween potluck

And now for a scary story -

Up until now, the boy hasn't really phased by anything - loud noises, animals, strange people who stick their fingers in his mouth at Target (yes, that actually happened), but recently he has begun to show that he is vulnerable to more than a lack of food or snuggles.

It turns out we have a monster in the house; it lives in the closet, but sometimes it comes out to terrorize the floor and anything on it, including little boys.

Yes, that's right, I'm talking about the vacuum. Yesterday, I was vacuuming the living room while he was playing in the entryway; I looked over to check on him, and he was sitting, staring at the vacuum with his lower lip jutting way out. Then he tried to crawl to me for comfort, but lo and behold the menacing beast outsmarted him and was even closer than before, resulting in further lip jutting and a few tears. Needless to say I unplugged the beast and picked up my scared little boy.

We had some snuggling and some nursing, and then I took him over to the vacuum for a closer look. He looked at it tentatively from the safety of my arms. I tapped/banged the vacuum a few times in a few different spots and called it "silly vacuum" to show him there was nothing to be afraid of. He followed suit with the banging and smiling, but the minute I turned it on again, the lip returned. I will keep trying to get him used to it in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, I gotta say his sad face was pretty cute. Truthfully, I don't see him sad very often, which makes me realize that I've got one happy little boy on my hands.

We encountered another newly discovered and conquered fear earlier this week at the park. On one of the climbing things, there is a tube made of a metal mesh with large holes. He has crawled through the tube before with no problem, but tonight he sat at the opening, looking at me on the other end with a bewildered look on his face. Then we realized he kept looking at the ground through the mesh. We had him put his hands on it, and he wouldn't put any weight on them. Then I crawled through the tube from his side, and at the other end, I put my hands in and banged the tube to show that it was, well, there. He cautiously put his hands in the tube and then slowly crawled toward me, amazed, I think, that he didn't fall to the ground. It may have also helped that Daddy went underneath and made funny faces from below.

This pic is from a month ago, but it's the only Halloween related one I have

We didn't end up doing anything Halloweeny today, but we did go out to lunch with an old friend where Wiggle ate some french fries and had his first taste of chicken. Tomorrow, C will finally be done with his Darwin festivities, and we will have some time together as a family.

2 comments:

  1. Lower lip jutting straight out...gee, I wonder where THAT came from? LOL! When you were born, I remember very well, the first thing you did was look around the delivery room at every face...you were making a list, Dad said...then your lower lip jutted straight out and began to quiver. I pulled you closed and snuggled and nursed you and you were fine, but the lower lip jutted out for years.

    I love the finger cookies, and the almond nails are inspired!

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  2. A million years ago, I, not quite able to talk used to make a large circuit on one of those things kids propel with their feet, from the living into the dining room through swinging door, into the pantry, the kitchen, the kitchen hall, the main hall, back to the entry and living room. It was a long loop. There was lots of things to navigate, doors, corners of cabinets, furniture. I did it all the time. And then one day stopped because I was afraid of something behind the screen by the swinging door between the dining room and the pantry. Mother asked me what was wrong, and all I could say was that there was an "effanoh" (my spelling) behind the screen. Mother decided to wait a couple of months when I would talk so that I could point and explain what the effanoh was. But when that time had passed, I didn't remember.

    But four years later when my brother was making the same circuit at the same age, he too would not go past the screen. And more curiously he too said that it was because there was an effanoh living behind the screen.

    And, just like me, a couple of months later, when he was able to put together sentences, his fear was gone along with his memory of what the effanoh was.

    So maybe children see things at certain ages that older people don't.

    The magic of childhood.

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