So Begin the Nightmares

So, some of my earliest childhood memories include nightmares and imagining things in my bedroom at night.

I remember one occasion when I slept with my Cabbage Patch doll and woke up screaming in the middle of the night because her hair was touching my hand.

Another time, I begged my mom to let me sleep with my E.T. doll and she said no, but that I could have it on the toybox next to the bed. After she left the room, I snuck the doll into bed with me. Later that night, I woke up terrified because there was something under the covers down by my feet. It was my E.T. doll, only now it was alive and glowing!

I remember laying in bed awake at night, and seeing little creatures walking and playing around on the floor. I don't remember being scared of them; I think I even talked to them. Of course they were imaginary, but to me at the time they seemed very real.

Since Gabe turned three, his imagination at night has really taken flight. We can't turn the lamp off in his room most nights until he's fast asleep. He talks about "monsters" in the room.

Last night, Gabe asked to sleep in his sleeping bag on the couch. He wasn't feeling well and Nick and I were tired, so we agreed. He asked for his Winnie-the-Pooh doll to sleep with and Nick got it for him. We read a couple of stories, then put on some music and he fell asleep.

Around 2 AM, we hear his voice from the living room asking for water. Nick got up and got the sippy cup out of Gabe's room and went into the living room. Gabe freaked out. I jumped out of bed at this point as well. Once we got him calmed down, he explained that there was a mouse in his bed! Nick searched and found the Pooh doll. Gabe got all excited again: "That's the mouse! That's the mouse! Aaaahhh!" We had to turn on the kitchen light so he could see that it was just Winnie-the-Pooh. Gabe was very grateful to see this, and he hugged his Pooh doll and said "Thank you!" in a relieved voice. But then he still expressed concern about the mouse, so we told him that the mouse had run away. But he was still scared and insisted on sleeping in our bed. We could feel that he had a fever, so we gave him some medicine and brought him to bed (I was grateful that Zac was sleeping through all this, and that we had decided to let Gabe sleep in the living room as otherwise he probably would have woke up his brother with his screaming). For several minutes more, he continued to talk about the mouse, and how "mouses can't climb," so he felt safe in our bed, which is up high.

Eventually he fell asleep again, but it wasn't long before he woke up crying, "Breaked! It breaked!" What broke? "The paper!" What paper? "The puzzle piece of paper!" It took a while of talking with him (and wandering the house looking for clues, since he usually dreams about familiar things) to learn what he was talking about: My mother-in-law has a 25-piece Winnie-the-Pooh jigsaw puzzle that we had had over at our house for a while and then had returned to her house. Gabe must have been dreaming about it, and then got upset that it "broke." He was obsessed about this puzzle and kept asking "Can you fix it? You have to fix it!" But of course we couldn't and he wasn't happy about that. We told him it was at Nana's house, and then he wanted to call Nana about it-- at 4 AM! He carried on and carried on...

Eventually he wore himself out and fell asleep and slept the rest of the night and morning until around 8:30-ish. Zac woke up around 5:00 and I brought him to bed and nursed him back down.

I think Nick got a little more sleep than I did, but not much. Gabe is taking a nap right now, which he desprately needs. I hope this fever doesn't last much longer; I don't know if I can take a second night of a three-year-old's hallucinations. But I guess it's only justice, since I did the same thing to my parents.