Thursday, November 3, 2011

Who's Afraid of the Dark?!

I always found it interesting how secure my girls were.  How unafraid and bold they were in their fresh and natural condition.  I made mental notes to avoid corrupting that part of them, because, while fear can equate to safety it can also hinder life.  Yes, we should be afraid of heights cause if we fall it will hurt, but too afraid and we never climb the Eiffel Tower or ride in an airplane.  It's conditioned to be afraid of insects and spiders (poison) but I'm not going to be the sole bug killer in this house.  And dogs should be approached cautiously and under supervision, but I don't want one of those kids who's shrieks in terror at the mere site of a tea cup chihuahua.  So I avoid saying things like "oh, that's scary" or "oh no, run away from the big bad so and so".  So you can understand why now I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how in the world Genevieve became afraid of the dark!  Like, literally, in the past two days.  I always assumed fear was learned, especially fear of something like the dark.  I mean, kids spend 9 months in the dark before they every see the light, and the last two years they've always gone to bed in a fairly dark room - we've never really done the "night light" thing. ... tried, but they were always crappy.  Suddenly, last night I go to bath them and I send Genevieve ahead to turn on the lights and she comes running back "No daddy, me scared. .... dark."  Qua?!  "Turn on the lights honey, it'll be fine." "No daddy. ... dark.  Me scared."  We had the same thing happen later in the night when we went to their room to read stories.  "Me scared.  Dark."  I have no comprehension of how the dark suddenly became a scary thing since Monday.  I asked Gina, later, when she got home from teaching and she said the same thing had happened the night before (I was studying so I wasn't at bath on Tuesday).  She can't figure out where it came from either.  The only thing we can be certain of is she wasn't scared of the dark on Monday. ... and now she apparently is.  Fortunately she's still not afraid of anything else (she was hugging a giant rat Halloween decoration on some one's porch the other day) so we'll just have to work on this dark thing. ... otherwise we'll have to rule out deep space exploration as a future career choice.

On a potty training update, we've now completed day 2 of no accidents. ... so one of two things is happening. 
1) They've totally mastered their bodily fluids and the modern day disposal methods, or. ...
2) The pressure is building and any moment both girls are going to explode and strewn our home in bodily waste.

.... I'm really pulling for number 1 here. .... no pun intended.

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