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Sunday, March 26, 2006

Fear of Fire

Last night, I committed the most horrible act upon my child: I nearly scared her to death.

BUT IT WASN'T ON PURPOSE!! In fact my original intent was to entertain them both. Hubby and I discovered a Japanese Hibachi Restaurant here in Southeast CT, so of course, we said, let's bring the kids! We've been entertained at these places, why wouldn't they? I'll tell you why. Fire scares my 2 year old apparently.

Now, we were fine getting into the restaurant, ordering drinks, having an appetizer. All good. They even have chopsticks with some sort of elastic concoction on then that makes them more like tongs, for kids. Kaity and Emily got the hang of their special chop sticks immediately.

Well after a while, the chef guy came in. I was excited to see the kids' reactions. He put some oil stuff on the grill and LIT IT UP --




....Immediately my ears were treated to a piercing scream and crying. Kaitlyn was TERRIFIED! I scooped her in my arms, and tried my best to calm her. She watched the show from my arms, but most of the time she was burrowed into my chest. I couldn't believe Kaity of all people was afraid of the fire. It really bothered me. The rest of the night, whenever she saw the flare of a fire anywhere else in the restaurant, she jumped and trembled. Needless to say, I felt terrible for her having this fear....but it really nagged at me inside....

See folks, Kaity is my adventurous child. She's the one who will dive bomb off the top of one couch to the love seat and vice versa. She took on stairs with ease. She loves to jump on beds, run like a lunatic and pretty much has fear of NOTHING. Honestly. She never freaks at fire works, or dogs, or anything, really....So you can see why, as a parent who knows her child is destined to be a stunt double someday, seeing Kaity get scared at something threw me for a loop...

Hubby and I discussed this for a while on the car ride home. It was then that I realized another reason the hibachi shouldn't have freaked Kaity out. We've had a few campfires with Mimi and her husband next door in the past. I've had to hold her back from the fire, because I feared she would get burnt. She would have touched it if she could, I swear. The Hubby made a point I hadn't thought of: She was in a chair, couldn't move back and the fire descended on her rather quickly. Usually she is in control of what she does, adventure wise, where it be willingly walk up to a fire, or dive bomb off the couch -- she's in charge. The restaurant situation put her in a situation where she had no control of something sudden, and it freaked her out.

It all made sense now. I started to remember throughout the rest of the drive home, instances of Kaitlyn being startled by things; loud noises, people jumping out at Halloween, flashes of light...and realized that when she is startled, it REALLY freaks her out. Man, did I feel like a totally BAD MOTHER after that. I should have realized that the situation would startle her and freak her out. I should have been prepared, already holding her, or even standing up, so she felt like she could get away. Hell, had I not jumped about 1/2 hour before, when the next table over was engulfed in flames suddenly? DUH.....

So most of my night I was wrapped up in guilt. The other half was frustration. Hubby got his wonderful new laptop. He's so happy. He also is ready to turn over the desktop that he built to lil ole me. But I have a LOT of crap on this one to transfer. At first, we were going to put in the extra hard drive from his, transfer stuff to it, then take it out and put it back in his. Or rather, MINE. Well, that didn't work. So then we said "Ok, let's just burn shit onto DVD and transfer it that way. I only have about 20 GB of shit I want to transfer, maybe less. Sure, no problem. The DVD's are 4.7 GB storage. No problemo. To quote Robin Williams from Disney's "Aladdin":

EERRRRR -- WRONG!!

Yeah, for some reason, my DVD RW drive wouldn't work. We thought it was the program. We put another one on...or 3....at this point, I was getting tired and frustrated to my boiling point. It was nearly midnight. I wanted to sleep. So, I did. As Hubby was coming in to say good night, I told him I would go through stuff I already have on CD today and figure out what truly needs to be transferred. After that, I'll burn stuff onto CD and transfer that way. Less stress....

What does this mean for you all? Well....it means that in the transfer process, which I am HOPING will take less than the whole day, I will not be online so much. Then I gotta set up Hubby's, erm, MY new computer and it's lovely 3 GB RAM and two hard drives (drool), to MY specifications. I am HOPING that by tomorrow I will be all done and flying on the 'net faster than ever. But I am going to be cautious and say...I probably won't be back til Tuesday or Wednesday......This was sort of unexpected, as I thought Hubby would wait a week or so to actually do all this.....so go figure....

Happy Trails Til We Meet Again (in a few days, I promise!)

~Cissa

3 flame(s) added to the fire:

jeopardygirl said...

This is going to sound cruel in a way, but this experience (and other similar)will be GOOD for Kaity. She will learn that you cannot have control over every situation, and it will teach her to learn to understand what she CAN control: her behaviour and responses. This kind of self-mastery will serve her better than never being exposed to the things or situations that frighten her. It won't be fun, but don't shelter her from that stuff, Cissa. (I'm not advocating throwing her into those situations deliberately, though)

Jay Noel said...

Yeah, I've seen adults freak out at Hibachi restaurants. Don't feel too guilty, as there was no way of knowing how your little one would react.

But from your experience, I'm keeping mine away from such places ;)

Dr.John said...

You never know what will upset a child. We took our grandson to a circus and he was really scared not of the anmials but of the clowns.My grandaughter was scared of fourth of July fireworks but not thunder or lightning. You just can't tell in advance. My kids on the other hand were usually doing things that scared me.