The Terrifying Incident With the Meatball

We are a Sesame Street house.  We really love those fuzzy little muppets. Hayden loves them because they are cute and friendly and sing catchy little tunes that make any 16 month old bust a move.  I love them because they are sweet and age-appropriate, not to mention familiar (I was also raised up on good old Sesame) and they keep my child entertained long enough for me to shower or use the restroom without a little helper there, too.

Haydie has never seen a Sesame segment she doesn't like - until now....

Yesterday, I started up this DVD for her:

Looks fairly harmless, right?  Well it was for a while... in fact, it had her mesmerized for quite a while, which I was grateful for because I wanted to do some dishes and clean up some toys.  She was dancing and clapping along in the living room, happy as a clam. 

That is, until The Terrifying Meatball rolled through.

There is a scene with Snuffy, singing "On Top of Spaghetti" and chasing after a wayward meatball.  This storyline runs throughout the 45 minutes of the show, coming to a terrifying climax in this harrowing scene where Elmo is nearly crushed by the menacing ball of meat:

This scared the crap out of my poor daughter.  She was climbing up my leg, trembling and sniffing (she can't say "Snuffy" and she thinks his name is "Sniffy" so she makes a sniffing sound for him) and pointing and crying.  Poor little thing!  Scared to death of a meatball!! 

I am not sure if she was scared of the music, or worried for her BFF Elmo, or just scared that the meatball would get her, too.  Even after we turned it off, she was asking me, "Elmo bye bye? Night night? *SniffSniff* [aka Snuffy] bye bye? Night night?" and pointing at the TV! 

I guess that since I have the weird kid who is scared of a rolling meatball, we will be putting that particular DVD away and sticking to safer, meatball-free viewing!