Bugged Out

Adrienne is petrified of bugs. Totally petrified. If she sees one she runs screaming, with HUGE crocodile tears and garbled, sobbing speech about how the bug is going to get her. In fact, yesterday she came running in the house upset because there was a bug in the sandbox. I think it might be a long summer. Sigh. The good news about this? Well, I can get her to listen and stop right where she's at if I tell her I see a bug. Ha! The bad news? These bugs seem to be permeating her thoughts and invading her dreams. Yesterday morning she woke up at 2:27 a.m. screaming, "Mom! Mommy! Help me! Mommy! Mommy! HELP!!" I ran upstairs as fast as I could, expecting a mess that I had at 12:32 the night before (total diarrhea blow out of the pull-up due to some fast little virus that ran through her and totally mortified her). Instead I found her with the light on and perched on the side outside rails of her bed screaming and crying, "Mom! Help! There's a fly in there!" I could tell she had a bad dream because she was almost inconsolable. As I put her back in her bed and tried to pull the covers over her she quickly swat them away, screaming like a mad woman. After about 10 minutes of consoling her, I finally got her to calm down and go back to bed. When she woke yesterday morning, the full story came to light. "Mom, I had a weally sca-wee dweam. A fly was trying to get into my mouf!" All I can think of if that perhaps she heard the song about the old lady who swallowed a fly? Who knows. Anyway, Jillian took this as her time to interject her wisdom: "Adrienne, you know what I do before I go to bed? I pray. You need to pray about this. I pray to God to ask him to give me nice dreams. And you know what? Sometimes God says no, and I have a scary dream anyway. But I sit and think about it and then I decide it's OK. It doesn't bother me and I am not afraid. You REALLY need to learn how to pray, Adrienne. Mom, can I teach her how to pray?" Seriously. The best part of the whole bug scenario came at bedtime last night. Matt was teasing Adrienne and telling her he was going to put a bug in her hair (mean Daddy!). She was freaking out, running through the upstairs rooms, etc. Jillian made a very good point when she said, "But Adrienne, you aren't afraid of lady bugs. Why are you afraid of all the other bugs?" (side note: the girls have been "caring" for a lady bug they found in the house. His name is Spotty and he lives in a plant. It's true that Adrienne is not afraid of Spotty and she will pick him up. second side note: I'm curious as to how my girls decided this "lady" bug is a boy). Adrienne's emotional answer came quickly through her curtain of tears, "Jillian, lady bugs aren't real!!!" To which Jillian fell on the floor and laughed uncontrollably.