If you could’ve heard her scream…

you would have thought someone was murdering her.  Tessa: 3 years old, sweet most of the time, with the tendency to be borderline-whiney.  This precious girl tells me at random times throughout my day, “I love you Mommy” and with pure joy and excitement in her voice “I grow up in Haiti!”  Not to paint a perfect picture, I have heard her scream before:  at Drew when he teases her or in anger at Braden when he steals a toy (or just sits down on her toys) or just when she doesn’t want to share!

Today I heard Tessa scream and cry in pure fear, and there wasn’t much I could do to calm her down.  The culprit: a massive mosquito with a leg-span the size of a nickel. We were driving to church to drop Drew off at preschool, driving thru traffic at a snails pace for who knows what reason.  Drew says, “Mommy, there’s a fly in the car” and I look back to see a huge mosquito flying around.  The next thing I know Tessa is screaming  and crying with her arms frozen in the air because the mosquito flew by her and landed on her window.  I was trying to convince her to shoo it away, but there is no reasoning with a hysterical 3-year-old.  The next thing I know, the mosquito landed in the underside of one of her arms that she had over her head.  She was screaming even louder and frozen with fear.  I’m trying to drive during all this and the area we were driving in has these huge orange road-construction drums lining the edge of the road, so there was no way for me to pull over.  All I could think to do was to start tossing stuff at her arm.  The thing within reach of me was my bag of trash from  Chick-fil-a this week, so I chucked it at her, successfully getting the nasty bug off of her arm.  But she’s still screaming because it’s still near her.  Fortunately, putting her window down sucked the nasty critter right out of the van.

I have never seen her like that and you can bet I gave her an extra big hug and kiss when we got to church.  I know there are going to be times in her life when she’s going to be that scared again.  I know I can’t protect her from everything.  I wish I could.  And I wish I could “fix” everything she faces in life as easily as I did today by just throwing trash.

~Becky