By Kristy Pantin | @kristypantin
My five year old daughter just cried hysterically while running from the top floor of our townhouse aaaaall the way to my room in the basement.
Three floors!
That’s two ridiculously long staircases and three hallways.
I have a monitor set up so that I can hear the girls from my room in the basement. So there I sat listening to the thumping of little feet on the stairs while she cried her way down to me. I started grinning, and tried my best to hold back the laughter but failed miserably.
I’m not one of those insane parents who find joy in their children’s terror of course. It’s just that I know from past experience that the crying was because of either a teeny tiny spider or an itty bitty fly.
Not only that, but imagine the humor in this situation for a moment.
It took about two full minutes of thumping down stairs and running along hallways…crying…before she finally reached me.
At eternity really.
A very, very slow and funny eternity.
With each thump it grew funnier until I was laughing outright.
By the time my darling had reached me, she had aged a year and had to remind herself what she was running from. Oh and she was no longer crying.
I’m thinking maybe taking the basement room was a good plan after all.
Before this whole basement relocation thing, my girls would seek me out roughly every five minutes to complain about everything under the sun that offended their cheery little lives. Mostly, who grabbed which toy and who wasn’t sharing every single item they were playing with.
Now, the thought of having to descend Mount Everest, go through two time zones, and pole vault over shark infested waters just to get to me has them thinking twice about complaining.
Occasionally I hear my name, followed by an irritated sigh, but then the fighting stops and all is quiet again because neither wants to begin the ten hour journey for something as insignificant as who gets to use the pink doll rather than the blue one.
I think this is a very good thing because it’s teaching them to solve things on their own since I’m not readily available.
Of course this is just while I’m working. Later on in the day during family time, it’s open season on mom.
My little one finally went back upstairs to brave the wicked fly, but I did have to spend some time explaining that in order to save her from every single insect this summer, I’d have to pack her up into a little green box with pretty bows and she would never be able to go bike riding again because of the impossibility of finding a box-sized helmet to keep her safe.
Since she had just gotten a new bike for her birthday last week, and a new, cool helmet this week, the thought of being stuck in a box, never to ride again made her rethink her fly issue with alarming speed.
Within five minutes she was trekking back upstairs to continue with nap time, a far braver little girl than she had been on the way down.
All in all I’d say it has been a successful day.
Maybe…and I’m being optimistic here…by the end of summer I will have been successful in ridding her of her insect fear.
There’s always hope 🙂