Pizza, dreams and 2am craziness: A true story

Those of you who don’t have kids, let this be a cautionary tale. For those of you who do have kids, this will probably just be amusing.

It’s a confusing story - and I, myself, still have yet to completely wrap my head around it (probably due to sleep deprivation). So bear with me.

Here goes.

I don’t know if it was because of the pizza we ate for dinner last night, or my having watched the entire second half of season one of Gossip Girl, but my subconscious decided to give me strange dreams. When my dream began (or when I became aware of it) I was hanging out with Serena, Blair, Chuck and Dan at various social events, mocking the poorly dressed.

Then, suddenly, I was at a church about to renew my vows with my husband. I was angry with him because for some reason he had decided to dye the back of my hair (only a very small portion) pink, blue and purple as a joke. This is not something my husband would ever do, which made things considerably more confusing.

That strangeness transformed into a gathering of hundreds of people - some from my past, some current friends, some tv show characters. We were all waiting for something, but I never figured out what. My dream was interrupted by the bloodcurdling scream of my two-year old.

I remember being in dreamland and vaguely hearing my daughter scream. It was just loud enough to wake me up a bit. I lay in bed, disoriented but starting to gain my bearings, when my daughter screamed again. Some instinct inside me triggered, and I flew – more like pole-vaulted – out of the bed. (I say pole-vaulted because I have to climb over my husband to get out of bed, but I never even touched him.)

As I ran down the hallway, I could see light coming from their room. FIRE was the first thought, and if it’s even possible, I moved faster. I burst through the door, and then stumbled to a stop.

Hayden had woken up and apparently decided that she didn’t want to sleep anymore. She had turned on the bedroom light and preceded to start throwing toys into Anna’s crib, which woke her up as well.

So now I’m standing in the middle of my daughters’ room, wide awake myself, with my heart beating out of my chest, trying to make my brain work long enough to decide what to do with this.

Once reason returned, I did the logical thing and put a Disney movie on with the sound turned completely off, turned the lights back off, put the girls in bed and prayed they would just fall back asleep after watching the movie for a few minutes.

It worked.

Unfortunately for me, my brain insisted on replaying the entirety of my crazy dreams over and over again, mixed in with the midnight screaming/fire/children fiasco, which once I fell asleep made my dreams even more odd.


Ah, motherhood.

Lovey-dovey day

Perhaps it's due to an overload of the soft rock that's been playing (randomly, not intentionally) on my ipod all day, but I'm feeling rather romantic today. Don't get me wrong, I will never be one to wax poetic about the endless wonders of true love and soul mates and all of that nonsense. I'm a tad more practical. However, I do feel a great deal of appreciation for my husband today.

Gary and I have been on a joint staycation this week with the kiddos, and it's been fabulous. Every single lazy, tv-rerun, cereal-for-dinner moment has been utterly wonderful. Prior to our time off I was a little concerned that spending so much time together without a break would cause some bickering. I'm not so naive to think married couples actually enjoy being together 24/7 all the time, but imagine my surprise in discovering it is possible in small increments - say, a week once a year.

The only argument - albiet a small one - to take place occurred over my vertically-blessed man grabbing the wrong baking dish out of the cabinet. The nerve of him. I fussed, he stomped angrily to the bedroom. Two minutes later we were laughing at his dramatic exit. (He's never been one to argue, which is a good thing, although sometimes I wish he would get a little angry once in a while. It can be frustrating to want to have a yelling match and your opponent refuses to join in.)

We're coming up on our three-year anniversary. Doesn't seem like we've been married that long, but at the same time I feel like I've had the urge to strangle him at least a hundred times. (Don't pretend to be shocked, all of you married people understand me completely.) Yet as painstakingly annoying as he can be sometimes, he is still the kindest, most honest, gentle, trustworthy and loving man I've ever met. He still opens doors for me, holds my hand in the car and in public, does little acts of love to remind me that he loves me. Sweetness in one of its best forms.

As far as child duty goes, Gary is above par. He's great with the feeding, bathing, story-time, play time, etc. The only area he's difficult with is diaper changing time. His argument: weak stomach. Wuss. Still, he's an all-around good dad, who is sweet enough to entertain the girls while Mommy tries to focus long enough to write blogs...