Attack of the foam monster!

Anya up to this point has been absolutely fearless. I don't mean that figuratively, either: until just a few days ago, I would say that we'd never really seen her scared of anything.

Certainly she's been upset, or angry, or sore on occasions, and a couple of times she's had what look like night terrors: that middle-of-the-night, still-asleep yelling fit that seems to subside as the sleeper wakes.

She also understands the terms 'scary' and 'scared' and likes to use them, though you can tell from the context that she understands them more as synonyms to 'run away' or 'may bite' and thinks of it all as quite a fun concept --missing the essential dread involved in the whole idea of fear.

Well that changed this week. Kate ran her a big bath with lots of bubbles, because bubbles are fun, right? Not so: the bubble mountain was so huge that a piece broke off and perched on the edge of the bath, wobbling. I think you can appreciate that this was utterly terrifying, and Anya became quite hysterical with fear. The next night we tried a bath with only a smaller quantity of bubbles but she was still desperate to escape; only last night, with bubble-free bathwater, were we able to get her to just sit down and enjoy herself.

I suppose this is part and parcel of her showing other signs of imagination, such as telling stories. Fear is all about imagination: it's really just our response to a plausible story we tell ourselves that involves pain and suffering. So I'm glad it's only the foam monster that's scaring her.

Update: Actually, there is one other thing she's scared of. A few times while we were in Fiji she woke up in the night upset, saying "cheeky monkey" in a forlorn voice. We have no idea what this meant -- she loves monkeys, so maybe the monkey in question was a victim rather than an antagonist. Then again, it does sound a bit like what you'd call an evil monkey in a horror film. I don't know if Anya's scared of cheeky monkey, but I think I am...