Scary Train

We live just a couple of hundred yards away from a train track. Luckily, living in this beautifully safe country, every time a train rattles by (in the middle of the night) it honks as many times as it can so we don't die crossing the barred train tracks while a train is coming. Anyway, so we hear the trains all the time, and since they're going by all the time, we've eventually tuned out the sound. Sophia grew up with it, and has never even noticed. Until the other day...

She was sitting alone in our bedroom, drawing at our computer desk. I had the balcony door open, and was somewhere else doing who knows what. Suddenly I heard hysterical sobbing from our bedroom. I ran over there, thinking something had happened, and Sophia had hurt herself. Nope. She was just staring with fear in her eyes towards the balcony where you could hear the loud, obnoxious honking of the train. I took her outside, and showed her the train, and told her the sound comes from the train, and how it goes 'ratatatata' and 'choochoo' and all that. That seemed to calm her down, and I figured this would now be resolved. Not so.

Since that incident she's been afraid of trains. To the point where she wakes up at times in the night, when a train goes by, and cries, or comes running to me in fear during the day. Quite sad. I had to laugh this morning though when Sophia was crying in her crib when a train was driving by. I walked in and was stroking her face, saying it was just the train. She took it from there with this little monologue:

Sophia: That's the train. It's the train. Ratatatatatatata. The train. The trains goes choochoo. Choochoo. The train. Ratatatatatata. It's the train.

It was so funny to me. It almost seemed like some mantra, something that if only she verbalized it, and repeated it often enough would make it all ok. I think she was just processing everything and trying to explain to herself what was happening. But it was just so cute to me to hear her laying there going 'ratatatatata' and all. Hehehe...

Another cute moment today was when I just got her ready for bed. It was getting a little late, and I could tell Sophia was getting tired, and restless. I was struggling to get a diaper on her, which took forever because she wiggled around and was kind of fighting it. So, in exasperation I said "Sophia!" and was ready to say something else, when she looked at me with a serious face and said "Zeit schlafen zu gehen!" (Time to go to bed!). I had to laugh because that's what I was about to say.

I love my little Sophia-monkey!