...and things that go bump in the night

For a couple of nights now Lexi has been afraid to go to sleep. She's worried about vampires. I don't know where she heard about vampires, but they are now at the top of her worry list. Last night she wanted to sleep with us. While I was in the hall hugging her and trying to convince her that there's no such thing as vampires, and Vicki was standing nearby offering the advice that she doesn't need to be worried about them coming into our house because they don't like little girls (thanks, Vicki), Ellie climbed out of bed and announced that she was scared, too, of "grampires". Which of course made us all laugh because then we were picturing Grandpa wearing a long black cape and sporting fangs. Not scary at all. The last time Lexi was worried about vampires at bedtime, Ellie claimed to be scared of "airplanes and ants".

All of this reminds me of my favorite irrational fear story, and I'm sharing it here with Vicki's permission. Not too long after we moved here, Vicki, who was about 4 1/2 at the time, came into my room early one morning and said she'd had a scary dream and was too afraid to be alone. I could tell that this was pretty serious because she was practically shaking. So, expecing to hear all about monsters or spiders or something like that, I asked her what she was worried about. Her answer? "I'm afraid that an elephant will get into our house!" It was so hard not to laugh, because she was genuninely terrified of this, and over the course of the next week or so was afraid of all kinds of zoo animals getting into our house - giraffes, tigers, and monkeys, mostly, besides the elephants, of course. It took a lot to convince her that they'd never, ever, be able to get into our house (except maybe the monkeys, but that would just be silly!)

So I told the girls this story last night, hoping that a little comic relief would perk Lexi up. As we were all (Vicki included) laughing about being afraid of elephants in the house, I said to Ellie, "Could elephants get in our house?" and she answered, "No, they wouldn't fit!" She thought for a second, and then she said, "But piggies could!"

So now we're afraid of vampires and piggies.