Ack! Dust!

My son is the bravest child I've ever seen. Mommy friends of mine have come to me in hopes of finding that their child was not the only one who feared the water going down the drain in the tub, or the vrrooooming vacuum. They have whispered to me, hoping that their kid wasn't a freak because he was afraid of his shadow, hoping my kid was also a freak.

But, alas my kid chases the vacuum, clapping with glee and has actually learned to turn it on himself to push it around. He puts his toys down the drain to watch them swirl and screams if you take him out of the tub before he waves bye-bye to every last drop of water going down. And, he kind of likes his buddy shadow. I figured he'd never, ever, in a million years be afraid of anything...while awake anyway (night terrors are a thing we deal with regularly).

Today though we find his nemesis. Dust. Yes, dust. Over the past week or so he's been increasingly interested in those specks of dust that you see floating through the air when sunlight beams through a window. At first he showed mild interest, pointing at the little flecks an making an "aaaah" sound. Then, it became a show of mild discomfort as the "aaah" was accompanied by stepping farther and farther away from the dust flecks and the vocalization became a bit louder and agitated.

Today, he progressed to full-on shrieking and crying complete with torrential downpour of tears and snot face. I've never seen anything like it. The most sunlight comes into our upstairs bathroom and he wouldn't even come into the room. He stood rooted to the door way, flailing his arms at the shards of sunlight, snot running out of his hysterical nose, shrieking to me as I tried to complete my routine in there. Apparently, he feared for my life.

It was pitiful. I tried to show him that dust wouldn't kill either of us. But, if you've ever tried to convince a toddler of anything like this, you know that you might as well be trying to get Jesus and Elvis to R.S.V.P. for your dinner party. Not going to happen. The best I could get him to do was wave a shaky hand through the dusty air while wailing hysterically as if the air itself was on fire.

This whole thing makes a few things abundantly clear: it's a totally adorable and weird thing to be afraid of, it makes it seem like my house is filthy and he'd better get over it pretty quick because there's nothing I can do about it.