06 | February | 2012

Tags

babies, childhood, conditioning, fears, psychology, sleep, weird

Okay, here’s where I explain the loss of the seahorse.

We really came to depend on that seahorse. During the whole Go The F*** To Sleep incident, Owl would often drift off to sleep staring dreamily at the seahorse’s glowing tummy.

When he started daycare, the seahorse went with him every day to help him go down at nap time.

Then, one Saturday a couple of months ago, Perfect Husband picked me up from work and told me that Owl was afraid of his seahorse.

“Don’t be silly,” I told him, “he fell asleep to it just last night – he just lay there and watched it until he drifted off, while I hummed in the rocking chair.”

“Well, he found it today and he brought it to me, so I turned it on for him, and he started to scream.”

“He must have just gotten a teething pain at that exact time. It must be a coincidence.”

To prove PH wrong, I turned on the seahorse and showed it to Owl when we got home that night.

…He took one look at his musical bedtime pal and burst into horrified, heartbroken tears, and ran off to find his Dada.

Monday afternoon, when I picked him up, Daycare Lady told me that Owl hadn’t slept. He kept standing up in his playpen an screaming in a heartbreaking manner which was entirely unlike him.

I couldn’t understand how he could have developed a fear of his seahorse literally over night, but it was looking more and more like this was, in fact, the case.

I asked Daycare Lady if anything bad had happened to Owl with the seahorse – maybe another child had thrown it at him?

No, she didn’t think so. She checked with her helper lady, and helper lady hadn’t seen anything like that either.

In any case, the next day he went to daycare without the seahorse and slept fine.

So I put the seahorse aside for a while.

I miss the darn thing because now if I want Owl to go to sleep without being on the booba, I have to sing “Mama’s Going To Buy You A Mockingbird” over and over and over and over again. I have had a sore throat lately and this ISN’T HELPING.

Besides, the music is soothing and I missed that, too.

In our organizing stint last week I dug up good ole’ Glowy again, and I offered it to Owl. It had been months. Surely… whatever it was that upset him about it… was forgotten by now.

It started well.

He seemed happy to see it and reached for it. He even pressed the belly to turn it on.

Words cannot express the look of betrayal that crossed his face when the music began to play.