A few minutes after tucking Eden in the other night we heard an ear-splitting scream come from her bedroom.
We both jumped up and sprinted to her room without thinking twice.
She was sitting up in bed. Completely fine. But breathing a little heavily and doing the dramatic-sobbing-cry and repeatedly saying, "I don't want to be swallowed by a WWHHHAALLLLLLLLEEEEEEEE!"
Confused. "Umm...what?"
"I. don't. want. to. be. swa. llowed. by. a. WHALE!"
And then in my best attempt I tried to explain (and doing my best not to laugh) why she'd most likely never be swallowed by a whale. (especially in West Texas.)
After some cuddling, drying of tears, and coaxing back under the covers, she feel asleep. (without being swallowed by a whale, of course)
My mind started to search for answers as to WHY ON EARTH she'd be soooooo terrified of being swallowed by a whale.
I mean, not that it wouldn't be really terrifying, by seriously, WHY would you ever truly be worried about it?!
It's not like we read about Jonah every night when we read her bible:
But then my mind started to flood with all the references she HAS had of being swallowed by a whale...
Her favorite book for the first 3 years of her life:
And then of course there's the VeggieTales version of Jonah
She's got a couple different copies of Jonah books...
Oh and my mom exposed her to Pinocchio. Who, oddly enough, is also swallowed by a whale.
And of course the VeggieTales version of Pinocchio...Pistachio is swallowed by a whale too. (A whale with a full-fledged African American Veggie Choir inside it's belly)
And then I remembered Dori and Nemo too...sheeeeesh. The list was getting long!
Okay so maybe it's NOT so unreasonable for her to be terrified of being swallowed by a whale. As far as she's concerned, there's been a lot of references to being swallowed by a whale! Sure, they're all repetitions of a few different stories, and of course they're not actually digested by a whale. Still, in her 3 years of life so far, that's a lot of whale swallowing going on.
I haven't tried it yet, but I'm pretty sure that if I threatened that she'd be swallowed by a whale, she'd be the most obedient little girl ever. I can hear it now...
"Eden, little girls that are mean to their brothers get swallowed by whales!"
Well, ok. That's a bit mean I guess. I won't go THAT far!
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5 comments:
There's a Wonder Pets get swallowed by a whale episode, too. Oughta try it. It's called "Save the Wonder Pets"
Poor Eden! Girl, we've been living, swimming in a nemo world for the past two weeks! Maybe this will make her feel better...tell her that she and Lily can be swallowed together!
WOW! I've never considered how many whale-swallowings there are in children's literature. Add that to all of the motherless-children in the Disney movies, and their cartoons are one big nightmare!!!
...I don't have your email address, so I have to leave an unrelated comment in response to your comment.
The top pair of Jeans were ReRocks - I got them on clearance at Pea in a Pod. The second pair were Motherhood that I found at Macy's. But I still don't like either of 'em. :)
But hey, it's a nice option to keep in your back pocket. ;)
Poor Eden! It's crazy to hear what seems fine to us but really scares our kids. And I laughed at the threat at the end. There have been times that I've told Bryson that if he didn't do ______ he couldn't go to school. I had to quickly stop that threat when I realized how soon it's going to backfire on me!
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