shouting at shadows

no, there are no pictures to show you today. i left the camera (which doesn't take very good pictures anyway because it's older and we've been spoiled by our other one which is now broken) at the house for taking before, during and after pictures. so far, i've taken a during picture of people eating pizza.

the past couple nights, noe has been afraid to sleep in her room. i've already told you that she's become afraid of everything, but suddenly she's decided that there are shadows, or a particular shadow, in her room that will hurt her. i'm not sure where this came from unless she had a nightmare or something about it. yesterday morning, she just woke up and started crying for me to come get her because "shadow hurt you". i've tried to explain that shadows can't hurt you, but i didn't really get through. then, for nap time, she threw an absolute fit about going in her room, which is really unusual. she never gives me problems with that when we're at home. i thought it was just because she had been off schedule so much lately that she thought she didn't have to take a nap any more, so we put her in there and just let her cry it out thinking she was just trying to get out of napping (and she REALLY needed a nap). well, last night it happened at bed time. she just cried and clung to me, insistingt that the "shadow hurt you". she wouldn't let go of me. if i got her calmed down enough by singing to her and rocking her, she would start to doze off, but then start all over again when i would try to lay her down. this is really strange for her. most nights, she is perfectly willing to go to bed, even kicking us out early sometimes. finally, after about ten minutes of this, i finally let her sleep in my bed. then, when fai and i were ready to go to bed, we carried her, still sleeping, back into her room. this morning, it happened again with the shadows. at nap time, however, it didn't because she was already asleep when we got home from church so she wasn't awake enough to complain when i laid her down. she woke up from her nap that way, though. and tonight, again, she's sleeping in my room. she doesn't mind playing in her room, but she won't sleep in her bed.

so, tonight, after their bath, we tried to ease her fears about shadows. it was actually quite amusing watching daddy convince her that the shadows weren't scary by kissing his shadow, hugging it, making shadow puppets and everything else we could think of. we played peek-a-boo with them, gave them high five, and even mali played with her shadow. noe started recognizing that we all have a shadow that looks like us and would point to them and name them, even her own. we thought that we had this solved, but then when it came time to sleep again, she was scared to get in bed, pointing at the wall and crying "shadow". here's the strange thing, though: there were no shadows where she's been pointing. it's always the same area that she points to, but we can't see anything there even though she's insisting it is. it's really weird. i'm not sure what else to try. the good thing, i guess, is that it's only for a week. then we move and she will have a new room, so hopefully it won't be an issue. if you have any suggestions, however, i would welcome them. i hate seeing her like that and we're pretty much out of ideas.