Garbage Man

Some kids are afraid of the Boogie Man, or monsters under their bed.  Not our little girl.  Her biggest fear in life is the "barjig man" (garbage man).

This is not a joke.  She is 100% terrrified to the bone of the barjig man.

A couple weeks ago we were going up the stairs and she said to me, "Barjig man not in my room!"  And I looked at her confused, thinking, "Of course, he's not in your room.  Why would you be thinking that?!"  Ever since then, the barjig man comments keep on coming.

She'll randomly say, "Barjig man not under your bed!"  How scary to think of the garbage man under our bed!  Or I'll ask her to go upstairs to get something and she'll refuse to do it because she thinks the garbage man is in her room.

The funniest time was last week.  I was looking for the scrub top Scott wore for Addie's birth.  The nurses inked Addie's tiny feet and made footprints on the shirt.  We thought it'd be fun to have it for all of our kids' births and have lot's of little tiny footprints all on that top.  Anyway, I was trying to find it and I told Addie all about it thinking she'd love to see her little footprints.  I went from closet to closet all over our house looking for the box that I knew it was in and I couldn't find it anywhere.  Addie was starting to get concerned and kept saying, "You don't can't find it!" (Sidenote: she says "don't can't" together all the time and I really love it!)  Finally, she let out a gasp and yelled, "THE BARJIG MAN TOOK IT!!!"  Needless to say, we found it, and, no, it was not in the garbage man's possession.

Up until today, it's kind of been a cute, little, irrational fear that she's had.  Then today when we were walking up stairs I heard the garbage truck right out her window.  Usually she really likes peeking out her window to see the giant truck drive by, so I said, "Addie, hurry, the garbage truck's outside!  Let's go look at it!"  She screamed bloody murder and started climbing up my leg, pleading for me to carry her.  Oops.

Addie spent the entire day safely perched on the couch, our bed, her bed or the dining room chair.  When moving from one of those things to the other, she would run, with a panic stricken face, as fast as she could and beg for me to hold her hand the whole way.  I'm really not exaggerating.

Here's to hoping this fear doesn't get worse before it gets better, because she was exhausting today!