Weather Vanes!

Sadie is more than a little obsessed with weather vanes. And it’s all because of her “Big Red Barn” book. One of the pages towards the front of the book says: “and on every barn is a weather vane of course, a golden flying horse.”

We read this book pretty much every night before bedtime when Sadie was tiny and she still looks at it most nights before bath time. She’s taken that particular sentence quite literally. Every barn is supposed to have a weather vane. Every barn.

Sadie has pointed out weather vanes for a long time. There’s a weather vane with an eagle on it at the local grocery store and she points to him every time we go shopping. It’s only recently that she’s starting demanding we notice buildings without weather vanes so we can observe what they don’t have.

Then she started obsessing over her barn puzzle. It has a red barn in the center that is surrounded by animals. And that red barn does not have a weather vane. Last week this caused hysterics. Sadie pointed it out to each of us, with increasing urgency until she was having a full out tantrum every time she saw it. The logical solution was to hide the puzzle, but Sadie would look for it. Finally Nani took a permanent marker and drew on a little stick figure weather vane. Sadie saw it and pointed (and actually seemed a little disappointed that she didn’t have a weather vane-less barn to point to anymore) and the tantrums finally stopped.

Luckily Sadie’s Wonder Pet School House has a big yellow weather vane. The Fischer Price barn she got for her first Christmas, however, doesn’t. This has been the latest drama. Right now there’s a red barn with a pink pig sitting on top of it sitting next to me. Yesterday Sadie has placed “Mater” the tow truck from Cars on the barn for most of the day. These are two of her favorite stand in weather vanes.

A few days ago she started going through her books and pointing out the top of every single building. She’s quite insistent. She’ll keep pointing and squealing until someone says “no weather vane.” And then she’ll get a happy little smile, turn the page and start over, pointing to the next building (or if there’s no building she points to the top of the page) and insisting that someone notice that there’s no weather vane there.