MOO-PHOBIA

Dallin's phobia (as if he doesn't have enough to deal with already), began with a cow toy at Aunt Joyce's house. This toy made a 'moo' sound when the compressed air inside would escape. To Dallin, the noise was horrifying and the petrified look on his face said it all, "no cows, no way, not in any day." A few months ago at his speech playgroup, the instructor read from a large pop-up reading book, and there it was... a cow. Dallin stood up and turned to me (as I was sitting behind him), and buried his face into my shoulder. This fear eventually evanesced over the weeks as the story was re-told during the playgroup, or so I thought. Then, Lina came down yesterday with her two kiddos, Lanu and Logo. It was great seeing them again. My busy schedule has been such that I have been unable to have them over for dinner, but I was glad we were able to see them. Anyhow, after dinner, we did our usual Sunday stroll through the neighborhood, this time to look for wild asparagus and feed the horses.
but the horses were gone and there were three steers in the pasture next door. The steers ran towards us as we approached.
As we got closer to the steers, Dallin began to freak out...
and started to scream and cry...
I tried to assure him that he was safe, but he wasn't going to hear any of it. He wanted to get out of his wagon and get far away as possible from the curious cows. I'll need to find ways to help him overcome this fear... again.
Anyway, we had no luck in finding asparagus, the horses were gone, Dallin was in a bad mood (can you blame him?), and Malia was hungry and she wanted out of her carseat. So, we turned around and headed home. On the way, we ran into one of our neighbors, Jeremy and his son, Caleb who had to do a TP rush to the store.With TP in one hand, and the other steering, Jeremy refuses to let the gas price hike affect his shopping.