When the kids were very little we took them to a county fair during a visit to Ohio. It was a fair that my husband had grown up going to and so for nostalgia’s sake we decided to go. Big E was only months old at the time and C was not yet two years old. It was the first time we had done something like that with the kids. We spent some time watching a tractor derby and then we wandered around the livestock buildings to see the animals being judged. C found the animals completely fascinating. She looked at chickens, turkeys, rabbits, cows, and pigs. At one point we walked into a building with sheep and goats. As we neared a pen, a sheep charged at the fencing, straight at C and made a loud baa-ing sound. This absolutely terrified C and she started to cry immediately. We explained to her that she was safe, but she wanted nothing to do with the farm animals after that.

When we got back to the great-grandparents’ house, C immediately started to tell them about the ‘goat’ that scared her. At the time she had a very limited vocabulary, so she was just rambling gibberish until she spit out the word ‘goat’ and ‘baaaaaaaaa’ with a look of bewilderment on her face.

This was her story and she told it all the time. “Gibberish gibberish gibberish GOAT gibberish BAAAAAAAA gibberish!!!”

It took quite awhile for C to start trusting farm animals again, but thankfully she finally came around!