Scary

"I don't like that. It's too scary for me."

For nearly three years Laurel was fearless. She wasn't scared of anything she saw in a book, TV show, movie, music video, or most things in real life.  Probably she was just too young to know she should be scared.  But even as a toddler she never had a terror of things like vacuums or hand dryers, like Isaac did at a young age.

But now she's old enough to be scared.  About two weeks ago I noticed that she was frightened by an intense scene in the Disney/Pixar animated movie "Cars," even though she had watched it many times before.  And she seems nervous about some scary stories Isaac tells, and she became terrified when I stepped out of her line of vision at the store yesterday.

And now she's claiming to be scared of the dark.  Tonight she even said, "I don't like my big-girl bed.  It's too scary for me."  Luckily that doesn't seem to be true!  She slept through the night last night in the new bed, and she fell asleep in it without trouble tonight.

Isaac, on the other hand, is relishing scary stuff for the first time ever.  He was a vampire for Halloween this year, you may recall, and six weeks later he is still making art featuring ghosts, fanged jack-o-lanterns, witches, and so forth.  And he still wants to hear us tell the story of "The Headless Horseman."