What we've decided is that she's advanced for her age

Yesterday afternoon on the ride home from daycare, Gabbie was being silly. Making noises, clapping her hands, and dancing in her seat. She kept making herself laugh really hard, and it was one of the greatest things ever. I love that kid so much it amazes me sometimes!

We got home and I was ready for the silly to continue. It gets dark here pretty early these days, so at 4:30, the sun was already pretty low in the sky. The front of our house faces west, so the sun was to our backs when we headed to the front porch. The sun was even out for once, a rare occasion these days. Of course, you know what happens on a sunny day right? You can see your shadow.

That's right, as soon as we got on the front porch, she saw her shadow, and absolutely lost it. I managed to get her in the house (no small feat since I can't pick her up and walk at the same time due to my bum ankle), where she saw even more shadows, and lost her cool even more.

The whole night was full of shadows and Gabbie losing her shit. She even saw the shadow of her arm on her high chair tray during dinner and started screaming. It may have been cute the first couple of times, but it was getting old, fast.

We tried everything we could think of to get her to be okay with her shadow. She would touch it, ever so gingerly, on the wall, but the floor shadows really got to her.

Finally, apparently more thirsty than scared of shadows, she got off my lap (where she had been perched all night - it's a nice, shadow free zone) and went to the kitchen. She was still moving slow for Gabbie and obviously watching her shadow, but she made it without stopping and crying big, fat tears. She ended the night more at peace with her shadow, but this morning had some problems again.

We googled the problem of course, and came up with, well, not much. Almost all the posts were about children who were older. Most people suggested reasoning with your child, but, seriously, you can't reason with a child who's not even a year and a half old yet. Someone else suggested past life regression. Yeah, I'll get right on that. Thanks.

Even though she seems so big and smart these days, she's still so little and just starting to learn about the world around her. It's hard to see her so upset when I can't do anything about it. I know this is just the first of many, many times I'll have this problem throughout her life. I just want to fix it, make it all better, see her happy and carefree again, but I can't. There are always shadows around, always something beyond my control, and that's a hard thing to have to learn how to deal with.