Monday, February 24, 2014

More sleepwalking...

http://doktorrf.deviantart.com/art/2-Resource-Pillow-332779266
Just the other morning I woke up in the wrong bed, but wait, I can explain...

When I sleepwalk I am caught between my dream world and reality.  I am not quite awake, but not deeply asleep either.  Sometimes this helps me remember the reasons behind my strange nighttime behavior.

About two days after my previous post on sleepwalking, I vaguely remember sitting straight up in bed.  The room had been hijacked and also the bed.  I am not sure who or what was sabotaging the room and bed, those details aren't clear, but sabotaged it was.

I remember lying back down and debating with myself whether or not it was worth risking the effects of the sabotage and just trying to go back to sleep.  Alas, that seemed too risky so I grabbed my pillow and headed off to another non-sabotaged bed.  I found the bottom bunk and crawled in with my six year old, who didn't notice.

About 3am I woke up to someone jabbing me in the shoulder.  "Hey, you're in the wrong bed.  Are you sleepwalking."  Clearly not.  Definitely sleeping.  I mumbled something, considered going back to my bed, but was too tired and my limbs would not cooperate so I stayed where I was and slept on.

About six a.m. I wandered back into my own room, my six year old none the wiser.  The next morning I commented that had I been up to it, I really could have gotten far in the four hours it took someone to notice I was missing...but hey, at least he looked.  And, for what it's worth, at least I have yet to leave the house.


What does the tooth fairy do about swallowed teeth?

Friday, February 28th is National Tooth Fairy Day.  I know you are all planning to celebrate.

In honor of the Tooth Fairy, and Tooth Fairy Day, here is another post about teeth.

My youngest has lost two baby teeth.  The teeth apparently were loose.  He told no one.  One day his Mother noticed something funny about his smile.  She said, "Hey, open your mouth again."  Sure enough there was a gap which previously was a tooth.

Mom felt a little guilty for not noticing sooner, or realizing he even *had* a loose tooth.  "Where did the tooth go?" she asked.  The child had no idea.  He said it hurt a little bit in gym class.  He did not notice anything falling out of his mouth.  Perhaps it was swallowed?  Child gave Mom a perplexed look.  There was no mention of the Tooth Fairy...

Then it happened AGAIN.  Same story, loose tooth, quiet child, tooth so loose it falls out on own, unbeknownst to child, unbeknownst to Mom.  Mom notices another gap.  Hmmm...this may be becoming a pattern.

Who swallows their own teeth?  I made child promise to alert me if anything else wiggles.  Oldest child (who is more concerned about the lost cash) suggested he write a note to the Tooth Fairy, explaining about the missing teeth.  So far, no note has appeared, that I am aware of. Apparently I am not aware of all things that go on in the mouths and minds of my children.  The middle child suggested that maybe if he manages to keep the next one that falls out that the Tooth Fairy will make up the lost funds then and that tooth will be worth three!

After doing some "research" online it appears that a good Mother would have helped her child write a note and of course the tooth fairy would come as it is a first tooth (or ahem, second).  Unfortunately too much time has gone by now and any tooth fairy appearance would just be suspicious...

For more tooth fairy drama: Elusive Tooth Fairy

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Sleepwalker

I descend from a long line of sleep walkers, well, okay, one that I know of, my Dad.  The most famous Dad sleepwalking story is the night he woke up outside in the rain on his back in a ditch in his underwear.  Apparently he had sleepwalked out of the house and fell in the ditch that he was digging for the new septic leach field.  After that night, we got a deadbolt and my Mother started locking him in the house when he went to bed.  For him, the sleepwalking peaked in his twenties and by the time he was 30 it had stopped.

My first memory of sleep walking was when I was a kid.  I walked out of my room into the kitchen and was trying to warn my family about the witch who had hijacked the dishwasher.  It was a very hard dream to communicate and I remember my Mother laughing, which made me SO MAD.  Although in retrospect, what else could she have done...

The times I remember sleep walking are usually the times someone wakes me up or I wake myself up.  In high school my room was in the basement and there were no windows so it was very dark.  I woke up one night to find myself out of bed, holding my alarm clock and trying to use it as a flashlight to find the door.  It wasn't very successful, but thankfully prevented me from getting too far...

When T and I were renting a house, before children, I remember getting out of bed and running to the window, grabbing at the mini-blinds and yelling at him to come help me save the kittens that were being strangled in the cords.  Needless to say, he didn't help me, but did wake me up and convince me to go back to bed.  I still remember the urgency of that dream and wonder why he couldn't just get up and help, or pretend to help or just tell me he saved them all so I could go back to sleep without being so disoriented...

The worse thing I ever did was when Jack was born.  He was an infant.  I was dreaming that the house was on fire and I got up, scooped up the sleeping infant and started running down the stairs.  When I got to the bottom I was horrified that I had actually picked up a sleeping baby...a baby that took forever to go to sleep...and now was waking up which meant another hour of nursing...  I have to wonder, what if I didn't wake up and put him in the car and started driving in my sleep...  Luckily, I always wake up before I get too far.  I have never left the house.

For me, the sleepwalking has gotten worse as I get older.  Since moving to this house, I sleep walk a lot.  Thankfully my husband is a light sleeper.  I joke that he sleeps with one eye open, checking on me.  Once I went down stairs and was rummaging in my purse for a ticket (that didn't exist) and he followed me and made me go back to bed.  A lot of times I just talk, or yell, not usually at him, but he is the only one there so he takes it personally...

There is also the wall in the bedroom next to my bed.  I have spent a lot of time sleep walking to the wall.  It is where the secret codes are written (a la A Beautiful Mind), where the conspiracy theories take root, where the garage door code that prevents the destruction of the world resides.  I spend too much time asleep touching this wall, trying to break the codes and patterns, trying to save the world.  Clearly, so far I have been successful!

I also have to be careful of what I watch before bed.  I can not watch any science fiction (the wall loves when I watch science fiction) or crime or police dramas.  Lost was the worst and my husband finally forbid it before bed.  Downton Abbey seems safe enough.  One night we were playing Pandemic which is a board game about saving the world from viral outbreaks (right up my alley, sure!) and I was dreaming that my two friends had figured out my strategy and were going to hide the codes behind the picture on the wall.  I had to stop this!  So I jumped out of bed and proceeded to take the picture off the wall.  Then I started to wake up, and disoriented wandered off into the bathroom to pretend that none of that had happened.

Upon coming back to bed I asked my husband.  "Are you awake".  Him:  "yup".  Me: "did you notice me take a picture off the wall?"  Him:  "yup"  Me:  "Why didn't you SAY something?"  Him: "well, you were being really careful..."  Me (thinking):  "How did you know I wasn't going to crash it over your head??"  Because really, I wouldn't put it past me.  I have no idea why sometimes he intervenes and sometimes he stays silent.  He usually waits a certain amount of time and then will get up to follow me to see what I am up to...   He doesn't understand that I am usually just trying to SAVE THE WORLD.

Last night in the middle of the night, I shook him awake, and demanded he return my glass.  He groaned and told me to stop it, but I knew he had that glass and I wanted it.  I jumped out of bed, yelling at him that I WOULD FIND IT and stumbled into the bathroom where I tried to mesh dreamland with reality.  Sheepishly, I went back to bed.  Him:  "you really have to stop this."  Me:  "you need to stop taking my stuff."  This morning he barely remembered the exchange.  When I asked him why he hasn't been so vigilant of late, he said "the difference is that now I just find you annoying..."

Touche!