No Fear

I have finally managed to sit down and breathe for a moment this Sunday evening after quite an exciting afternoon. My husband and I took our two girls and one of the older one's friends to a local fair. We thought that purchasing 50 tickets at the booth would be plenty since the younger one (23 months) would not be riding many of the rides. A little petting zoo, a little merry-go-round, that's it. Well, as she has proven in so many other areas, we quite underestimated our little daredevil. She rode everything that the big girls (almost five and seven, respectively) did except the roller coaster, about which I put my foot down. She has the benefit (?) of being quite tall for her age, so she met the height requirements for almost all the kiddie rides. The highlight of the day was the "Frog Jumper" which, for those who aren't familiar with carnival rides, takes children row-like style waaaaaaayy up in the air and "boings" them up and down until you seriously regret that funnel cake purchase. She technically lacked about an inch or so being tall enough, but the ride operator felt sorry for her with her little face pressed up longingly against the gate, and asked us to let her ride, too. She actually stopped the ride and strapped her in, promising me that she'd let her off if she got scared. Well, she loved it. We even had a little crowd gathering around and pointing, saying "look at her!" One man stated "She is fearless!" and was astonished when we told him how old she is. He just shook his head and grinned the grin of those who don't have to deal with it. I did get some cute pictures, albeit shaky ones. The ride operator told my husband that I needed to get a picture of her and he needed to get a picture of my face when I saw how high she went. After the ride, she kept saying "Fun, fun!," which is one of her current favorite phrases and completely melts my heart and makes the hard moments worthwhile (like when she uses her second-favorite phrase "No, I do!."

I should retract the statement about it being the highlight of the day, however. A close second was when I had to take her to the First Aid booth to get her knee cleaned up and bandaged since she fell and re-opened the nasty scrape from the other day, and it took me and both EMTs to hold her down and put the bandage on. Fine with peroxide spray, fine with Neosporin, flipped out when putting the bandage on. Sometimes I'm not certain if I'm raising a child or taming a wildcat.