Giant Cricket, On the Scene

Remember when bratling was afraid of crickets? I do. She found that old picture of a giant groady cricket that I had "autographed" for her by Giant Cricket. This lead to her getting depressed and whiny on an otherwise good day... She missed her cricket friend. I tried to cheer her up in a conventional way but she was in one of those kinda moods where nothing would work. Nothing normal.

I told her to stay upstairs with GRA whilst I looked into getting her a surprise and lo and behold thus began an experiment in elaborate yarn spinning. I "e-mailed" Giant Cricket, whom I told whelp moved to Florida. Giant Cricket emailed me back. It cheered her right up.

"Giant Cricket is real!"

The warm fuzzies fizzled about an hour later when she wrote a love letter to the family on the wall with my graphite stick and even further when she hid her dinner under the table. Oh well, Can't have everything. Let's see how far Giant Cricket'll go.

As for me, I'm pretty good. Not in the best of condition. Like my sister has said, "They don't make them like they used to." My wrists are messed up. That combined with a definitive lack of a camera has put me pretty much out of commission at the time. I just like to remind everyone that I am in fact still alive.

Love, Giant Cricket

There comes a time in every caregivers life when they have to deal with the inevitable (and often irrational) fright of a child. Garbage Trucks (Ga-Hup!), Vacuum Cleaners, Storms, Fireworks, Weird photoshopped pictures of aye-aye owls... I could go on for ages about those horrible and scary things that terrify Bratling. The newest trend has leaned towards insects, one in particular will send my dear whelp into fits of terror induced shrieks (my ears shall never recover). Crickets.



Yes, one of the most harmless bugs we have around here and she screams at even the idea that they are near her. I know what must be done. I must nip this fear in the bud just as I did for the other grubby, giant bugs of the past.

Yes there was another bug she feared. They don't come around very often: the Cicada

Yes yes messy downstairs, I didn't finish cleaning it at that point.

Bratling didn't know what to think of those either, heck, she was downright scared of those big, loud bugs that had swarmed our suburbs. Needless to say before they were all gone I took the liberty to indoctrenate Whelp that those harmless giants were cool. Which they are.


See? happy kid.

I'm used to these quirky frights by now. Every new one that pops up I get rid of it in a process that reminds me of whack-a-mole. Nail one, another pops up. Every time I do so however, it is always in the insanest, most unorthodox ways. Because normal coping skills are boring.

For the vacuum I turned it on and popped that sucking nozzle right on the kid. Upon seeing that she wasn't going to get "eaten" she was cool with it from then on. The Aye-aye owl? Printed up a picture of it, hung it up in plain view of her bed and let Bratling take her course. Sure enough, she was dragging that picture around up until she got it just too messy to keep (I so should have saved that picture, darn it.). I'm taking the same route with the crickets. I found the biggest, groadiest, fattest, grubby cricket picture I could find. Printed it, autographed it "Giant Cricket", and tossed it in the front of her backpack for Kindergarten. Now if I write a post about a teacher kicking me in my nonexistent nads, you'll know why.

I'm going to be printing out more and repeating the process until crickets don't bug her anymore, and yes; that pun was intentional. :P