Nightmares, Monsters and Little Sisters

The minds of children are fascinating. As a mother, one of the gifts I am able to partake of is the way their minds process things. I was watching Rachel Ray and she had twins modeling some outfits. Daniel commented that they had the same heads. I just chuckled and told him they were twins. "Oh," he says. "I didn't know." Then I asked if he knew what twins were and he said yes. Hmm . . but for some reason the twins on TV just had the same heads?

Daniel has been having nightmares the past few weeks. I was waiting for this stage in parenting. Between his occasional trips into our room at night and Coral attempting to climb into bed with us a few nights a week, Carlo and I are tired. Well, I turned to "The No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers" by Elizabeth Pantley. I am a firm believer in Babywise, but chose a gentler approach for the toddler stage. For some reason, I can handle babies crying better than I can toddlers.

After another sleepless night and early rising, I pulled the book out for a refresher course. I really like this book for one main reason- it recommends the appropriate time of sleep for each age. For example, Coral is two and between her nap and nighttime sleep, she should be getting around 13 hours of sleep. Daniel is almost five and he should be getting around 11 hours of sleep; most likely without a nap. Using this as a reference, I only allowed Coral to have a one hour nap. Daniel did not take a nap. He usually doesn't.

Before bedtime, I also decided to use another suggestion from the book and did a little role play with my children. Carlo and I explained that waking mommy and daddy up each night causes us to be tired and then we aren't fun. Then we showed them a bed made up of blankets and a pillow by the bed. We explained that if they woke up in the night and felt like they needed to be by mom and dad, they could sleep in the bed we made for them, but only if they didn't wake us up. After the explanation, we practiced a few times. Carlo and I pretended to sleep and they climbed into the bed on the floor without waking us up.

Last night was our first trial run and I am proud to report we did not have any night wakings. Well, for us anyway. I did notice this morning the floor bed had been slept in, so I asked Daniel and he said he was scared in middle of the night and did indeed sleep next to our bed! I asked him if he felt better after sleeping next to us and he said he did. And I woke up happy- at 5:00 am to work out. Yay!

And why is Daniel having nightmares . . . I have a theory. As I was checking on my children the other night before I went to bed, I opened Daniel's door and saw a face on the other side of his bed staring at me! His room is somewhat dark, so before I panicked, I focused on his bed to see if he was in it. Yes, he was, so who's face was that staring at me from the dark? The shape starting moving out from behind the bed and then ran to me and said, "Hi Mom!" It was Coral! I'd have nightmares too if my little sister was standing over me while I slept. Silly girl. I almost had a heart attack.