We came face to face with Big Foot

My kids love a good story.  And as story tellers go, I have to say, my husband and I are pretty good.

Remember this story that Sloan and I concocted with his Star Wars figurines and a dollhouse?

While my stories tend to be rather fantastic and, erm, out there (think unicorns and flying mommy’s) Lee are more realistic and he adds a lot of special sound effects.  He’s actually freaked Tia out with his stories so much that she immediately burrows under her bed covers before he even begins. 

And, well, you know how we get pleasure out of terrifying our poor children…

Last night was a beautiful fall night.  A little cold for my liking, but pleasant enough for us to take a long walk as a family, then come home and build a fire in the fire pit and roast hot dogs, then sit in a circle and tell stories.

When Lee began telling his story about two little boys camping in the woods where a Big Foot was known to live, a hush fell over our little group.  Tia climbed into my lap and put her hands over her ears as Lee ran around in the shadows of the yard, growling softly, rattling the chain link fence and stomping around.

Midway through the story, Landon climbed into my arms.  Because he’s a bit of a mama’s boy and tends to get jealous when others get my time, I assumed he just wanted to let Tia know that he had a solid stake on the territory of my lap.

Lee ended his story by telling us all to close our eyes.  When we did, he dashed back into  the darkest part of the yard and shook the chain link fence letting out a fierce growl.  Sloan and Tia screamed and laughed.  I let out a mock scream and we all folded over in a heap of giggles at daddy’s fantastic tale.

Until, that is, I tried to extract my poor third child from my arms only to discover he had a death grip on my neck and his little heart was racing wildly.  I pulled his face back just enough to tell him everything was all right and he dissolved into tears and buried his face in my neck.

Landon is only 21 months old, so we didn’t even realize that he was paying attention to our story, much less comprehending it.  But he did, poor baby, and we scared him half to death.  He moaned “Daddy,” and refused to let go of my neck.

I finally extracted him enough to pass him off to Lee who held him tight and reassured him everything was okay, while we both cracked up  looked on in pity feeling deeply saddened that we had scared the boy so much.  Of course, Daddy always has the ability to make everything better and in no time had Landon laughing and happy again.

So, needless to say, I think we have sufficiently damaged the third child enough to ensure that he’ll need significant therapy as an adult to deal with his irrational fear of that mythical creature called Big Foot.

Yay us.

(eyeroll)