Saturday, July 26, 2014

The Barking Light

My mom and stepdad recently enclosed their deck, creating a three-season room. It's a beautiful room and Olivia loves it. There's a ramp that she can somersault down and the rooms on two sides of the room make it bright and fun.

Once the room was finished, my mom asked if Tom could go to her house and help install a new security light by the back door of the sun room. He was happy to do this and the girls and I accompanied him to her house one day last week for him to do this.

It took a little longer than anticipated but once it was finally up, my mom had to fiddle with it to get it to do what they wanted. See, this light has a sensor that makes the light come on when motion is detected. Along with the light, a sound is activated. At first, the sound the light made was that of a man's voice saying, "You are trespassing."

This was fine. Except my mom didn't really want it to say that. Instead, she changed it to the sound of a barking dog.

While inside the room, the sound of the barking dog wasn't that big a deal to Olivia.

The next morning, though, as I dropped the girls off at my mom's for the day, Olivia heard that light barking and it freaked her right out.

I'm sure everyone remembers that O isn't a big fan of dogs. She hates them, to be perfectly blunt. They are horrible, loud, slobbery creatures as far as she is concerned.

When that light started barking the second I opened the car door, Olivia clapped her hands over her ears and cried, "Can you carry me into Grammy's house?"

I tried not to laugh as I reminded her that the barking wasn't an actual dog, that it was just the light. She didn't care. She hated the barking light as much as she'd hate a real dog barking.

I carried her in.

This morning we dropped Alyssa off so my mom could take her to a friend's for the day. The minute we pulled into the driveway, O covered her ears.

When I opened the car door, I noted that the light was not barking. I told Olivia this. It didn't matter. As far as she was concerned, that light might start barking at any moment and she wanted to be sure her feet were not touching the ground if/when that happened.

I carried her again.

Once inside my mom assured Olivia that the sound effects of the light has been turned off. It would never bark or talk again. Olivia didn't believe this, she wanted me to carry her to the car when we left.

We had to go to my mom's again this afternoon and once again, she wanted to be carried. I insisted that there would be no barking and then told her that I couldn't carry her because I had to carry a heavy box into the house. You'd think I'd told the child she had to walk barefoot along a path covered with worms. Her anxiety was at red alert.

She ran into the house and clung to my stepdad as I got the box out of the car and followed her inside.

Yes, I ended up carrying her back out to the car.

When we got home, I told Tom about her stress over the barking light and even just hearing us talk, O needed to cover her ears. When Tom barked at her, she demanded that he stop it. I'm proud of that demand. I almost expected her to quiver with fear.

We'll get past this, I hope. I think the more often she goes to Gram's house and doesn't hear that barking light, the less she'll want to be carried to and from the car. Again, I hope this is the case. Girlfriend is no longer a lightweight.

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