The only things we have to fear...

are the lawnmower and the frog potty.

Oliver's fear of the lawnmower was reestablished last week. Wes mowed the backyard one evening, and Oliver was watching with great interest at the back door. So I let him out in the yard. We don't want him to play around the lawnmower, but we don't want him to be overly afraid of it either. Wes turned off the mower a minute later to empty the grass out, and Oliver followed him to the back corner of the yard while he did that. Then Wes turned the mower back on. And Ollie lost it. He turned around and ran toward me on the patio, crying hysterically. He tripped on some bricks and fell over, which escalated the crying.

Ollie sat with me the rest of the time. I tried to put him down once when he was getting squirmy, but he started crying before his feet hit the floor. What makes me laugh is that Olives loves the vacuum and is afraid of the lawnmower. Lucy is not afraid of the lawnmower but does not like the vacuum.

The other fear Ollie is facing is his frog potty. After peeing in his potty a second time, Oliver burst into tears, and ever since then he gets completely worked up if I try to put him on it. He'll play with it, sit on it himself, and even asks about it (he does a little dance every time he says "potty" -- seems to be some confusion with a dance his daycare teacher does when she says "party"), but if I put him on it, there's screaming, tears, and the need for a hug.

Soon, perhaps, he will get some outside naked time. He's tugging at his diapers when he poops in them and shows a real interest in potty training. If only I could convince him that the frog's not out to get him.

Oliver's first fears

Ollie has been a pretty even-keeled kind of guy when it comes to being afraid.  He's appropriately cautious of the stairs, for example, and dogs he doesn't know.  But he's not really afraid. He just wants time to check things out, figure out what's going on, and then he warms up into his normally effusive self.  But Thursday, when Wes was working in the lawn, we witnessed his first fear -- the lawnmower.  Oliver watched us mow the lawn last summer, usually from the back door, with great interest, but he was never out amongst it while it was running.  I didn't see the whole thing go down like Wes did, but he said that Ollie got a little nervous when he pulled the mower down into the yard.  Then, as soon as Wes turned it on, Ollie fell apart.  He was sobbing and screaming and looking for the first available adult to pick him up.  He ended up sitting with me in a chair on the porch, safely in my lap, while Wes mowed.  He was rapt for the duration of the mowing, watching Wes go back and forth across the lawn, but he did not want to budge from my lap.  I enjoyed the cuddliness that I so rarely get these days and talked to him about what Wes was doing.  As soon as the mower was put away, he was willing to get up and go run around again.

He had a mini-meltdown again yesterday afternoon. We were sitting on the steps to the garage with the door to the garage open when Wes came home.  The sight of the Subaru coming at him scared him again, and he got upset until Wes got out of the car and calmed him.

It's good to see that Oliver is appropriately afraid of some of the most obviously dangerous things around the house.  If I could extend this good sense to being less outgoing with perfect strangers in the park, I'd be set.