Night Visitors

We’ve been having visitors at night lately.   Sometimes it happens early, sometimes much later and on occasion just before the sun comes up.   I’ll be asleep or nearly so when I hear a pitter patter or a thud thud or a clump clump as one of the children comes from their shared room upstairs into our bedroom.

What happens then, depending on the child and the situation is an approach to either my side or dad’s side of the bed with a plaintive or quiet or scared calling out of our name.   After we answer we find out the nature of the visitor.

Last night I first had my son who explained that he’d had a nightmare.   He didn’t want to talk about what, just stay in our bed for five minutes with his head on the “baby pillow” I keep for my neck.   After that he calmly walked himself back upstairs but left with a warning he might be back if the nightmare returned.

Next my daughter came down upset because she’d lost her pillow.   It was no where at all, simply gone.   I thought she meant her new sequin pillow Mimi had gotten for her but when it was clear I couldn’t easily send her back upstairs without help I walked up with her.   As we ascended I began to understand it wasn’t another pillow, it was her main pillow.   When we got to her bed she found her main pillow exactly where it always is, unmoved.    She quickly pulled the comforter over her and curled up in a ball, not even bothering to answer me when I said I’d see her in the morning.

Both of those happened before my husband came upstairs from watching a movie.   When he did come to bed he put his ice cream bowl in the sink and turned off the lights.   Or maybe he did something else.  I don’t know what he did, but it must have made noice because as soon as he’d settled into bed my daughter was back downstairs, saying she’d heard a monster.

This was unusual because first of all, they don’t typically wake to sounds we make and second, she went straight to monster in the house.   Dad explained it was him and walked her back upstairs.  After that we all were able to sleep through the rest of the night uninterrupted.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was quite unhappy I wasn’t pulling his fried shrimp out of the oven when the alarm went of signaling time was up.   I knew he was hungry but I told him if I didn’t get the oven mitts to pull out the shrimp, my hands would be sizzling like the food on the tray and I’d be a very unhappy mother with burned hands.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked my husband the other school morning when she came downstairs to our bedroom, “dad, are you going to get up in time for bacon?”