Phat! Phat! or Chasing Fairies

If you get nervous about references to the spirit world, this may not be the blog for you. I plan to write a lot about my son, and he seems pretty dialed in to...um, well...other things that we don't see. I'm going to describe one such incident right now, so if these things bother you, feel free to cover your eyes.

Lucas has been seeing things in the upper corners of his bedroom since he could first hold up his head and follow their movements. We figured that either:
(a) he was really a cat in a newborn costume,
(b) he was deliberately faking us out, or
(c) he was actually watching things that we couldn't see.
Using logical reasoning, we determined that it was (c), and in order to keep ourselves from getting spooked, we referred to them as fairies.

When he got old enough to point and babble, he would point up at them and his arm would move as if following a moth. One time, while sitting on my lap facing me in the chair in his room, his eyes seemed to follow one of them as it swooped down between our faces and over to the window. He would jabber conversationally with them, and only occasionally would he get heated up over some sort of fairy argument, so we just accepted it as a... "gift".

Recently, I shared this with a woman who claims to know about such things, and she immediately said, "You need to get them out of there." Now I was freaked out. According to her, in case you have the same problem, here is what you do:

1. 
   
   Get a smudge stick - that's a bunch of sage all tied up with string - and light it on fire until it smokes.
2. 
   
   Systematically "sweep" the fairies out of the room with the smoke of the smudge stick, directing them out the door, or preferably a window, paying special attention to the corners. You must also make a big X with the smoke when you cross a doorway, closet or window.
3. 
   
   This part feels ridiculous: You must shout "Phat! Phat!" at them (yes, like Fat! Fat!) because they hate that. Apparently they're self-conscious about their weight? You can clap, ring bells or make other loud noises, as well.
4. 
   
   When you're done, you must eat a handful of candy - but not chocolate. My choice was gummy bears.

Yes, I did all this while my husband played with our son in the other room. Lucas heard me, though, and I could hear his little voice echoing mine from the far side of the house, "Phat! Phat!" He doesn't miss a beat!

So now Lucas does his own space clearing whenever the fairies make a repeat appearance. Periodically, we hear him in his room shouting, "Phat! Phat!" and "Go-go-go!", while clapping sharply. When we walk in, we see him looking at the upper corners of the room, and then we watch his eyes follow something out the window. I guess he's got it handled.