Taking Her Cues
Mike walked out the garage door to take the garbage out a few minutes ago. Little Girl was standing right by the door and trying to follow him, so I went over to make sure she didn’t get smushed by the door. As the door closed, I saw a tiny brown streak come scurrying in the door. Not knowing what it was at first, my natural reaction was to scream and whisk LG out away as fast as possible. Which of course scared her and made her start crying. It was only a tiny baby gecko, and when I realized that I took her back over to look at it as we waited for Mike to come back in the house (the same Mike who HEARD me scream and kept right on walking - darn him).
When he got back in, I explained what happened, and he tried to get her to look at the gecko with him. Every time it moved she screamed and cried. Great. I taught her to be afraid of lizards. (I suck. You can rescind your Mother of the Year Award nominations. I’ll understand. Really I will.) Finally, I picked her up and took her back over to the gecko myself. And she was fine. I kept explaining to her that Mommy was just startled because she didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t anything to be afraid of, and Mommy was sorry if she scared her. (Okay, maybe not so fast on the nominations.)
Then it was time to send the gecko back into the big wide world and so Mike caught it in his hand to take it outside. Whereupon, it shed its microscopic little tail. Which kept convulsing around in Mike’s hand. Which totally creeped me out. To my credit, this time I did not scream. And neither did LG. Lesson learned.
Heard from LG in the bathtub tonight: “Gecko! Gecko! Gecko! Gecko!” (You get the picture.)
