Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Top Ten Irrational Fears

Here are a list of a few of Cece's irrational fears, which in reality aren't all that irrational when you're 2 feet tall and 17 pounds...

1) Loud Noises: vaccuum cleaner, hairdryer, food processor, blender, um, and other loud noises
   a) Except for fireworks and sonic booms created by air show jet pilots which she has consistently slept   through.

Cece sleeping through the 7th inning of the baseball game during which fireworks celebrated a home run.
Bonus: Jeff stuffing his face with popcorn!

  1.    b) Are we seeing the irrational yet?
2) Animals: mostly pets i.e. cats and dogs...Cece shrieks and throws herself at the closest person.  As her pop-pop says, "Any ship in the harbor."  When she was even younger, she would visibly shake when an animal appeared.  She seems to be getting bolder.  She's very interested in what the animals are doing, but if they approach her all bets are off.

3) Stuffed animals: Cece does not reserve her worry to animals that live and breathe, but a stuffed animal can send her into a tizzy as well.  Nana likes to play a game with her monkeys where she tosses them to Cecelia and she runs (in her best toddler-esque running) from the room.

4) Action figures (animals here too): Nana brought over some small plastic (not too small, all you choking hazard folks) for Cece to play with and, again, she shook with fear.  I found this to be a good deterrant when we went to visit her cousins and she was trying to attack their plates while they ate lunch.  I put a dinosaur on either side of them and she did not approach again.

5) Some toys that make noise independently, sometimes: We have a fridge farm toy.  Sometimes Cecelia LOVES it when the song plays.  Sometimes she looks skeptically at it as if to say, "But how does it know?"

6) Your favorite and mine...the carseat:  I gave myself the blogging Murphy's Law kiss of death when I indicated in an earlier post that Cece was beginning to tolerate the carseat.  Wrong-o-wrong, wrong.  Now, we do our best to time any long car trips to correspond to nap time.  Two birds, one stone.  But if she wakes up on the way, or if she's in the car during an alert time, all bets are off - could be good, could be very, very (very) bad.  I've gotten better at tolerating such shenanigans.  In the early days, I ALWAYS pulled over to check on my baby girl, to get her out of that evil seat, and rock her, nurse her, love her, because she clearly NEEDED me.  Now, I call back, "eh - you're ok." And on we go.




7) Water: Again, not all the time, but she's not a lover of the pool.  She will be though, if it's the last thing I do that girl WILL love the water.


8) Sand: Such a girly girl, when her feet extend to sand, she recoils in disgust.  When I plopped her in the sand to see if "immersion" might do the trick, she proceeded to pluck sand from her tootsies one grain at a time.



9) Grass: As with sand, she just won't touch the stuff with her feet.  at. all.  So, silver lining here - if I put her on a blanket in the midst of either sand or grass, she's not going ANYWHERE.  Even though she's a fully mobile unit now, I can trap her on her very own island and know that she's not going to make a jail break.


10) Certain relatives: Sometimes she loves 'em, sometimes...not so much.  All in good time :)

Oh wait...did I mention the balloons?

2 comments:

Jen said...

Oh my gosh, thanks for sharing Cece's irrational fears!! You're such a good writer Ellen - you made me laugh, out loud, through each of them! :-)

Jeffrey said...

Sounds like some sensory issues, eh? Great post and I love her faces/expressions! I think she is looking a bit like Jeff Z. now