elf puppet

Meet elf puppet.

He's a kindly ole elf... that is a puppet. Jon's parents got it for him many years ago when they traveled to the Czech Republic.

I pulled him out one day from up in our closet and thought he was kind of cute in a freakish sort of way.

Jaina freaked out over him in a cute-ish sort of way.

Jon liked that she was terrified of it. He liked to tease her with it.

We decided she needed to get over her fear of this elf puppet.

(Please ignore our front room-we've got big plans for it, I promise:))

We tried to make it dance and spin.

We tried putting it on Jaina's My little Pony's scooter to make her laugh.

Nothing was working.

Then we asked her if she wanted him put in the "dungeon" (crawl space) where the "monster" lives. She liked that plan. So we did it, but made her watch us do it so she knew he was really down there. This was hard for her to do, because she couldn't even look at the puppet without shaking.

Then one day out of blue, Jaina said she wanted to touch the elf puppet. So we quickly pulled him out of the "dungeon". She carefully grabbed onto the strings and made him dance and spin...

and then she touched his hand.

Yes, Jaina has come quite a ways from only a few weeks ago. I guess we've learned she just does things on her own time.