First of all, Happy 7th Anniversary to Shea and John! Love you guys.
Anyway, last Monday Max and Abby saw the Air Force Thunderbirds fly over their school when I went to pick them up. The jets were really loud which made me nervous at first but Max seemed fine with that and in awe of the jets. We found out that they were going to be performing at the air base on Saturday and even though we kept warning himt hat it was going to be VERY LOUD he kept insisting that he wanted to go. Abby was excited about it too. So Saturday afternoon rolled around and John got them packed up and on the way to the show. I stayed home to recuperate from a lukewarm garage sale that morning and to go to a birthday party with Lucy.
John had called on the way to say there was a lot of traffic and Max saw one of the other jets in the sky and I heard him exclaim in awe..."That's incredible!" A very short while later John called to say they were on the way home. Apparently they had to stop along the way for the kids to use the restroom and as they got out of the car a jet flew directly overhead and made a louder noise than usual (something to do with the afterburners I think). Anyway, Max lost it as did Abby. John did his best to calm them down and tried to talk them into just parking the car in a parking lot and watching from there but they were having none of it. So needless to say it was a bust.
Sunday we were to go as a family to the Blessing of the Fleet (which Abby called the Shrimp Festival). Her preschool teacher was going to be there signing her book and Abby wanted to see her. The girls and I had errands to do so John and Max got there and as the girls and I were about halfway there John called and said Max was flipping out and they needed to leave. Apparently he started to get upset when he saw the speakers for the band set up (he knew it would be loud). I think the real kicker though was when he thought he saw a clown. For some reason unbeknownst to John and I Max is terrified of any type of character (that isn't safely tucked inside the t.v.)
Whenever he sees someone dressed in a costume he just loses it and very loudly demands that he be taken home. He will even start to get nervous if he thinks there will be some sort of character there. He fully understands that it is a real person just wearing a costume and I even think that he knows he doesn't need to be afraid but for some reason he can't help himself. Needless to say, Disney World is not in our immediate future :)
Since Abby really wanted to go I met John in the church parking lot and let him take Abby while I took Max and Lucy home. John did call me later to say that our daughter was inhaling a bowl of shrimp and grits and then he had to just spoon crab dip into her mouth...our little southern belle! I told John that since Abby is so dramatic I thought we should start calling her Scarlett O'Hara whenever she pitches a fit!
So now we are not only dealing with Max's fears but today I got a call from the school that Abby wouldn't stop crying and was calling for me (she was fine when I left her). When I got there to pick her up I found out that the class had been out on the playground and a plane flew overhead and Abby freaked out thinking it was the "fighter jets coming to pick her up". How do we fix this????? We don't want the kids missing out on things because they are afraid but we also don't want them to feel like they are bad or disappointing us because to them these fears are very real. Any ideas?
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