King Sized Nightmares
My six year old daughter was standing at my bed side. She was whimpering that she'd had a bad dream. I sleepily raised my head from the pillow and glanced at the clock. The number three was all I could make out. The rest was irrelevant because I had just been up a little over an hour earlier feeding her baby sister. Two hours before that, somehow Tyler had made his way into our bedroom. When this happened I do not know. He has learned to sneak up on his father's side of the bed and worm his way into the middle without waking me because I carry him back to his bed when this happens. Yes, we have a King sized bed. But, you put one child into this equation and it equals mom on the edge of one side, dad on the edge of another and child turned sideways in the middle. Sometimes I am lucky enough to get the "head" end, but most of the time I get the mule kicking "leg" end.
I kicked the covers down and threw my legs over the edge of the bed careful not to move the bassinet that contained the previously fed four month old sister mentioned above. Shelby wanted to chatter about her dream. I just put my finger over my mouth and motioned her back toward her room. I walked her to her bedroom. As I tucked her in she told me that she had a bad dream. I told her that it was okay and I would tuck her in and she could go back to sleep. She said that she wanted to sleep with me and I informed her that she was a big girl and she needed to sleep in her own bed. I kissed her forehead and made my way back into my bedroom.
I contemplated taking Tyler back to his bed at this time, but I realized that if I did he'd probably start screaming and I'd have two children awake with no doubt that Emily would follow suit. I laid back down after turning Tyler straight in the bed. It wasn't long after when Shelby came back into my bedroom and said that she could not sleep in her bed because she was scared. Her dream catcher was not doing it's job. She threw her bad dream to it and it fell back down on her!
For those of you unfamilliar with a dream catcher, it is traditionally a Native American made craft designed to hang above a child's bed to catch nightmares. Shelby informed me that tonight when we get home that we have to clean it out. We must take it from her ceiling and shake it off outside so that the bad dreams that it has collected will be gone. It is too full to collect any more nightmares. Well, that's that...I will be spending my evening cleaning cob webs from the corners and bad dreams out of dream catchers. How about you? What will you be doing this evening?! Hopefully tonight will mean more sleep, even if it means dreaming of something such as work or even Ferrari parts.
