A year ago I wouldn't have been brave enough to go picking fruit with Cupcake. (This seems like a natural and sensible point to explain that I'll be calling my little girl Cupcake in these posts. Doubtless when she's older she will find that unbearably saccharine and laughable, but remind me to tell her then that it could have been a LOT worse. Mini Tart? Well quite - I thought not.)
Anyway, fruit picking. Why would that take courage? Well, I didn't trust myself to be able to cope with Cupcake's possible ... what shall I call them? Anxiety attacks almost, if a three year old can have those. I wanted so badly to know I could comfort her, contain her fears, make her world feel safe. But I wasn't sure, and she knew it. I learned more and more of her triggers, and slowly she showed me what helped her.
We went fruit picking today. It was great. It was quiet (most people still in school or work, or perhaps not trusting the breeze pushing dark clouds across the sky). Cupcake, as predicted, was very taken with the idea of carrying her own little "basket" and marched straight off to fill it. She turned out to be an asset in spotting ripe prime berries, as the ones at her eye level would be overlooked by most adult pickers, being around their knee-height.
Here are just a few of the things that would have sent Cupcake into a spiral of genuine fear previously: wide open spaces, doing something new, touching a gooseberry, eating a strawberry, being more than a few steps away from me... I could go on.
Here's what bothered her today: a musical carousel (and she still decided to have a go on it, after watching for a few minutes to check it out). She alternated between striding and running up the grass between the fruit bushes, she ate far more strawberries than she carried home, she got a bit grumpy when I called to her to stay within sight...I loved it. Now, what am I going to do with all the gooseberries?
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