Unfortunately, Anna developed a pretty intense emotional reaction to bees, wasps, flies, spiders, ants, etc. about the middle of last week and so any time that we spent outdoors inevitably turned into a chance for her to practice how to deal with fear (in other words, tears and screaming for Anna and Mommy trying to teach Anna how to deal with that fear). In fact, Anna first started having major meltdowns about the bugs on Wednesday or Thursday, and Kate then learned pretty quickly that she should also be extremely afraid of anything flying or buzzing around her. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday involved lots of strategies on how to deal with being afraid and what are (and what are not) appropriate things to fear.
Though it was challenging for all, we kept at it (as opposed to locking ourselves indoors for the duration) and things got gradually better over the weekend. I think we've gotten over the worst of things since we haven't had any tears from either girl in the past two days in relation to bees. They definitely notice them, but we're more likely to hear "Shoo, bee! Don't bother me!" instead of screaming now :)
Besides working on that, Anna has also been working really hard on saying the "l" sound. We've been trying to teach her off and on for awhile, but she didn't seem to have the right muscle control until just recently. Now, instead of hearing words like "yike" and "yove" and "yiwy" (lily), she actually says like and love and lily. The best part is hearing Kate say "Anna, good job with your l's" except that she pronounces l's as "ehws" :)
This weekend we made Saturday a work day so that Sunday we could have a fun day after church.
We got SO much accomplished on Saturday so after early church we headed up to Natural Bridge State Park for a couple of hikes and a picnic lunch.
We also had enough time to go to a metal sculpture garden that we always would see on our way to other places but never had time to stop.
Both the hike and the "tour" were a lot of fun, even if there were a few tears because of things buzzing around someone's head :)
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