Our children may be getting on in years, but one thing has stuck with them since their days of infancy. They can regularly wake us up in the middle of the night for no good frickin' reason. With Jessica, our 5-year-old, it's usually either a bad dream or an environmental issue. Here's how the dream sequence goes:
"Ahhhh.....!!! Mommmmyyyyy!!!!
(Mommy leaps out of bed and dashes down the hall. Dad pretends he slept through the racket with a classic roll-and-grunt maneuver)
"What is it honey?" Mommy comes to a stop in front of daughter's bed, her heart pounding through her chest.
"Mommy, I had a bad dream!"
"Well, tell me about it."
"Um. Um. Zeebee Zee (her stuffed zebra), um, she was eating a carrot."
"And?"
"That's all."
For example of an environmental issue, let's discuss missing socks. About once a week she will wake us because one of the socks she had on her feet has slipped off during the night and disappeared into the depths of her covers. This, understandably, is a situation requiring severe panic.
"Waaaahhhh! Moooooooom!!!!!"
"What is it honey?" Mommy comes to a stop in front of daughter's bed, heart pounding as before.
"I...sniff...can't....sniff....find....sniff....my.....sock...."
"Are your feet cold?"
"no.....sniff"
"Do you need the sock right now?"
"YES! It's my fuzzy sock!"
Mommy then proceeds to strip the bed entirely, only to have Jessica inform her that, oh wait, she didn't wear socks to bed tonight.
If the younger chooses not to wake us on any given night, chances are good the elder sibling will. Usually she knows enough that mom will be PISSED if she's woken up yet again, so she will stealthily tiptoe into our room, put her nose to my nose, and lightly clear her throat. The end result is usually the launching of her father into the ceiling fan. This typically happens on Saturday mornings, the one day dad gets to sleep in a little. We repeatedly tell her how, back in our day, weekends were for sneaking downstairs and watching cartoons all morning without waking the parents. That hasn't sunk in yet.
"Echem. Dad"?
"Holy crap WHAT WHAT WHAT!!!??"
"I got myself dressed. Can I go downstairs?"
"Ask me again and I sell you to an Albanian slave labor camp."
"So that's a yes?"
1 comment:
Do you have a phone number for that Albanian slave labor camp? I might need to call it in the morning.
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