Not My Best...

Did I mention Abby is going to a therapist to help her gain tools to cope with her "fears"?  If I didn't  I was fully intending to, under the post heading of "Abby vs. the Therapist".  Because she has no faith at all that what she's doing will help.  It *is* helping, but obviously I don't fight about it and just let the help help.

Anyway, the fear that sent us there initially is a totally crippling crazy irrational fear of bees.  I say it like that because the girl has been stung twice, is not allergic, these are not unknown freakish things, she knows it hurts and then it doesn't.  Anyway, it has really really changed my carefree social butterfly into a much more troubled spirit - not excited - in fact totally terrified of any fun out of doors.  All the time? No, but way more than before. Before, all the drama in her little heart was dedicated to the pain of not having social events every minute of every day.

The main course of action is to let the therapist do their work and just sort of jog Abby thru trouble spots.  One thing Steve and I have been doing more of is having special adventures for her alone with one of us alone.  She went to see Adventures of Tin Tin last weekend with Steve.

This weekend I thought I'd take her on a little photography adventure.  I'm taking a break from taking jobs at the moment and just want to try to rediscover (as I will probably have to do every year) photography not based on clients.  Abby loves to take photos too... sometimes.  But I figured it was a good idea.  Brilliant if I do say so myself as we weren't going to be basing our relationship on really expensive outings or only on shopping or food.

Yeah, so I took her to take pictures of... flowers.  You all see where this is going, but I didn't.  The idea that where there are flowers, there are bees did not even enter my consciousness until Abby refused to leave the car.

Temptation salvaged the day (the less paralyzed she was about the bees, the bigger the gift she would get at the end- yes there goes my no money adventure idea... but she was bought off by a $12 book which hey... isn't $100 at least...).  The lure of the gift got her to talk about other things, silly things while we spent a whole hour amongst dreaded bee attracting plant life.

All in all, a win. But an unintentional challenge.  I couldn't believe I had missed the flower/bee connection.  Sweet girl.  Our special adventure time was kinda akin to going to the dentist, but hey - it was just us.

edited to add: I should point out no matter of bribery would have gotten her thru this a month ago.  Yay for therapy