Exposure therapy.

Some of you may remember Eleanor's octopus from these, also known as My Favorite Ever, pictures:

Ugh, it's like she WANTS me to put captions under her and then post them to the internet.

ANYway, the octopus' legs hoot when you squeeze them and I think at one point I hooted them when she wasn't expecting it and now she has this crazy love/fierce distrust relationship with the octopus. He lives on the bottom shelf with a blanket over him, because for a while there she couldn't stand to be left in the same room as him if she could see him, and the other day she was exploring the room and pulled the blanket off and it was every bit as hilarious as I expected it to be.

So now he lives on the bottom shelf with NO blanket, and she won't go near him without me right there so she can climb me when she is overcome with fright, but she also won't leave him alone. She's always crawling over to where she can stare at him.

Today I was like, JUST KISS ALREADY and picked her up and plunked her down in front of him

and she was immediately like, Oh crap

Is he coming?

Oh crap

and she's grinning in that last one because, while she both fears and hates him, she also loves him. She is having a great and terrible time. It's complex. Anyway, we got to about here

and the stove buzzer went off, which is something else she doesn't trust, and the combination of the two was too much for her and now she's gone off the octopus again.