Best. Parents. EVER.

Last week, I was in the kitchen cleaning up and getting ready to cook lunch when Monster started yelling at me from the other side of the room. Not fussing just yelling.

"Hey! Mama! Maaaamaaaa! Hey!".

I ignored him for a minute but he just kept at it so I finally went over to him and picked him up and started back into the kitchen with him figuring he just needed a little attention and that way I could hold him and still finish lunch.

As we walked into the kitchen though he freaked. Screaming no and trying frantically to crawl backwards over my shoulder to get out of the kitchen almost causing both of us to fall backwards. I set him down and he went running back into the living room still screaming no like he was terrified.

I immediately started trying to figure out what was so scary in the kitchen all of a sudden, holding up random things from the counter and opening cabinets. None of which seemed to bother him. Then I stepped on this in the kitchen floor:

When I stepped on it, K screamed and I got frustrated that I couldn't figure out what was so freaking scary and I kicked this little ghosty towards the playroom door but it bounced off and landed about three feet from K. He FREAKED. OUT.  I have never seen a toddler fall all over himself trying to get away from something so fast. It was like a scene from some kind of horror movie except instead of running away from a masked chainsaw killer, he was running from a 4" tall smiling ghost plush.

So, of course like any good mother, I tried to reason with him about it at first. I tried to show him it was okay and it was just a toy and it was fun! See! Fun! He was having none of it. Every time it would come within a few feet of him, he would run and scream and hide. I pretty quickly realized the upside of this silliness is that it would keep him out of my bathroom where he loves to unroll the toilet paper and leave it in a big pile in the floor. So of course I sat it in the doorway and he hasn't been in there since.

Then I made the mistake of showing T how terrified he was of it which of course prompted him to chase him around the house with it, which prompted me to grab the camera and take a video of it and then post it on the internet for everyone to see what totally awesome parents we are:



At this point, it turned into a mix of terror and laughter. He realized T was playing with him but he was still so freaked out by ghosty's smile or whatever that he couldn't even look at it. Nice, right?

For now, the ghosty sits here on my desk, keeping K from climbing up in my chair and pounding away at the keyboard like usual. He no longer screams when he sees it and when we chase him with it he just dissolves into a fit of giggles and lays down on the floor so we can tickle him with it. Still though, he does give it the stink eye every time he passes it. Somewhere in the back of his toddler mind, that thing is going to fling itself at him all harry carry like it did out of the kitchen floor the other day and his screamer baby instinct is ready for it. Just in case...