Nightmare House

The day began at 4:40 a.m. I was awoken by murmuring sounds coming from the other side of the bed. Our five-year-old son was whispering something to my husband...and I tried my hardest to ignore it. After spending all day with the kids (not to mention the years of night feedings my husband got to sleep through when they were babies), nowadays I pretty much make let my husband deal with the nighttime interruptions.

Is this what my son's nightmare looked
like, I wonder?

My son has been having nightmares lately, and that's what was going on early this morning. I heard my husband walking around, setting up a "bed" for my son on the floor of our room. Soon all was quiet again. Ten minutes later, however, just as sleep was beginning to envelope me, I heard more whispers. The same nightmare--of our house about to be engulfed by flames--had interrupted my little man's sleep once more.

Clearly, he needed a little extra TLC, so I idiotically offered up the bed. My husband could sleep in the spare room and my son could cuddle up with Mommy. I kept my hand on his warm, smooth, little back as he fell fast asleep.

Soon I began to wonder if my boy was now dreaming perhaps of riding his bike or of having ants in his pants, because he was twitching and wriggling up a storm. Grrrrr. Over and over again, just as I'd begin falling down that blissful rabbit's hole of slumber, the bed would jiggle and shake. How is it possible for a 44-pound boy to make it feel as though I were experiencing a 7.2-magnitude earthquake?

I weighed my options: stay in my bed and not sleep, or go elsewhere but risk my little man waking up again and being extra-scared by my absence. I chose the later, and snuck down the hall to my son's room, falling with happy abandon into his red race-car bed with the dinosaur sheets. By now it was 5:30, and beginning to get light out.

Minutes later, I heard wailing. Yup, my son had woken up and found the bed empty. I trudged back into my bedroom, laid down next to the Wiggle Monster yet again, closed my eyes, and watched the inside of my eyelids slowly go from black to reddish as the day dawned.

I must've fallen asleep sometime around 6:30, because next thing I knew, I was waking up and my little man was staring at me. "Is it my time?" he asked. I rolled over and glanced at the clock: 7:05, his normal wake-up time.

"It would be your time if you hadn't been up half the night." I groaned, immediately falling back to sleep.

Rustle, wiggle, twitch.

"Fine. You can get up. But go wake daddy. I need to sleep."

My son climbed off the bed and scampered out of the room.

Ahhhh, alone at last.

Meeeoooow.

The Natural History of Growing Up

There was another blog-worthy episode of How I Met Your Mother last night (maybe I should turn this into a HIMYM blog!).

As you may or may not know, Marshall and Lily met in college, back when they were anti-establishment idealists bent on making a difference. Marshall became a lawyer, with the intention of working for the NRDC (Natural Resource Defense Council) so he could "save the world" as Lily says. But instead, he ended up a corporate lawyer for Goliath National Bank. He defends his position: "Remember, no one's the same as they were in college." But Lily doesn't like it and she won't accept it.

Later on in the episode, Marshall tells Lily that he's been offered a five-year contract with Goliath; Lily assumes he's not going to accept, because working at a bank was supposed to be just a temporary thing. She still views her husband as the not-for-profit, idealistic guy he was in college. But people change, and he's not that dude anymore. Lily is devastated: "I want you to be the person I fell in love with."

In a brilliant scene, Lily is sadly wandering around the Natural History Museum (the gang is at a formal gala, sponsored by Goliath), pondering the news that Marshall is determined to accept the GNB contract, thereby putting an end to her dream of him saving the world. She enters a room with various animal dioramas. Next to a "DALL'S SHEEP" one is this: "COLLEGE MARSHALL (EXTINCT)." Behind the glass is College Marshall in his dorm room. He has the munchies and is eating a huge sub.

"I want you, as opposed to who you've become," says Lily. "You've changed so much."

"You can't have me," replies Marshall. "Look at the sign; I'm extinct."

It got me thinking about the extinct me: the girl who marched on Washington in a pro-choice rally and stayed up half the night arguing about the latest cause. The girl who dreamed of a career as a documentarian, or maybe a spy. The girl who was going to travel the world...learn to speak Russian...climb the highest mountains...help bring global injustices to light.

Where is this girl now? She's a married woman, living in middle-class suburbia, driving a mini-van, cooking dinner every night, folding laundry, and wiping poopy bums. Sigh....

But yet she's also raising two incredible little people: nurturing, teaching, feeding, clothing, playing, singing, dancing, laughing, tickling, kissing, hugging, and loving, loving, loving, loving.

There is so much more love in my life today than I ever could have imagined. The present-day me has so much more going for her than the college me. I'll take my current life, thank you very much.

It beats climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro any day of the week.