Nightmare on Atlas Drive

You all know that Collin is anti-sleeping with Mommy and Daddy. In fact, if his own bed were to spontaneously combust and he were left with the option of sleeping in flames, or to sleep with us, I'm pretty sure, he'd figure out a way to sleep in fire, rather than snuggle with us. That's why last night, when he refused to sleep anywhere other than snuggled between us, it was pretty weird, in that wonderful kind of way.

Yeah, there was that time a couple months back when he "slept" with us for like an hour or two in the middle of the night when he had a cold; but other than that, his whole life has passed, nighttime-snuggle free. I think he gets it from me, who would prefer if Bryon slept on the floor. He's lucky to get a pinky toe touching me in the middle of the night. Sure, a hug-snuggle is awesome while you are awake, but once it's time for the getting serious time of sleep, I've had enough touching.

Anyway, about eleven p.m. last night, we were awakened by shrieking, and I mean shrieking. This isn't totally uncommon because the little guy has night terrors on occasion. These are kind of weird because while he looks awake, he's not. He'll wail, stand up, and scream at the top of his lungs about who knows what. They last anywhere from a few seconds to a half hour sometimes. They are horrible; but eventually, he just lays back down and closes his eyes, end of story. It's best to just let them pass undisturbed because he won't remember what's going on in that little brain of his.

A nightmare is different. It means he's woken up in the throes of a dream and remembers enough of what's happened in his brain to be afraid. Poor guy. Bryon went in and I could hear on the monitor that Daddy wasn't cutting the mustard. "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" was being shouted. Did you guys hear it? It was pretty loud. Anyway, I went in and he clung to my neck so tightly, I'm pretty sure he did some damage.

I rocked him until I was pretty sure he was asleep. We talked about bad dreams and there's nothing cuter than a scared little boy muttering "yesh" to questions about a bad dream through whimpers. I swear, it was almost worth the nightmare to hear that. It broke my heart! Apparently, not asleep anyway because he sprung to life when I tried to put him back down and about ripped my neck off. I asked him if he wanted to come back to bed with me. The "yesh," was emphatic but he screamed, "MONKEY!" as we trailed down the hallway. So, we had to invite Monkey too.

He was zonked in seconds after getting to our bed. Usually our bed is an exercise in futility, resulting in thirty minutes of eye-poking and anatomy labeling, followed by a return to the crib, instigated by Collin himself requesting it. Not this time. He nuzzled in and cradled against me. The few times he woke in the night, I asked him if he wanted to go back to his bed and he shook his head so hard when he replied "no," I'm pretty sure it could've caused an earthquake. Apparently, something was really, really scary in there.

So, we've had our first serious, serious nightmare. I'm curious about what it will be like tonight. The end result though is that today, he was a little tired! I'm hoping he'll take a good nap...although from the sound of it right now, bed is a little scary right now because he's WIDE awake in there, chatting away at his crib.

P.S. my suspicion is that he's afraid of the Christmas lights Daddy put in his room especially for him. He's freaked out by them if we show them what they look like when we pull the blinds up. If the blinds are down, he says "tree." If we pull the blinds up, he shakes his head "no!" emphatically. I think what was a special treat from Daddy has become a source of fear. Poor Daddy tried to do something nice and it's become horror zone...sort of like the Pirate Puppet that sent us into a night terror frenzy when Daddy brought it home from a TDY. Daddy's always trying! We love him anyway.