"A Very Bad Dream"

Amanda sometimes has dreams which she finds to be rather upsetting. However, hearing her description of them is really quite entertaining. As she relates her dreams to me, I often find myself having one of those "even though it requires the use of every muscle, I am suppressing my laughter for now, but the minute I get a chance, I'm going to walk up to my room, close the door, and laugh out loud until I'm done" moments. Everyone who has ever been a parent of a young child knows exactly the kind of moment I’m talking about.

One of my favorite dreams is the one in which Amanda's Granddad (actually her great-granddad) “turned into a fish”, chased Amanda down, and gobbled her up. Apparently the whole thing was realistic enough that it was scary to her, but to me, Amanda’s report of a kind old man morphing into a crazy child-eating fish was just odd enough to be funny … Of course, I wasn’t the one that got eaten … I may have reacted differently if I had been the victim in such an awful scene.

In a more recent dream, our family was canoeing and Amanda fell into the water. As she reported the dream to us, she angrily pointed out that neither of her parents bothered to get her out of the water, and because we had not properly outfitted her with a “boat-coat” she “went to the bottom”. I can see how a dream like that would be upsetting to a child, but it was hard not to laugh at how frustrated she was with our parental negligence. What were we thinking? Who takes their family on a canoeing trip with no “boat-coats”?

Needless to say, in our house we often have discussions about dreams.

Recently, Lily has added "dreams" to her list of things that she is truly concerned about. I use quotation marks on “dreams” because Lily has no idea what a dream really is. As best as we can tell, Lily has determined in her mind that anything that causes her to be upset (for any reason and at any time during the day or night) is a “dream.” And for some weird reason, she has identified a very small freckle on her left shin as the source of all “dreams”. When she wakes up in the night, fights with her sister over lunch, gets hurt, or becomes upset for any reason at all, she pulls up her pant leg, points to her freckle, and through sobs utters the words, “I have a very bad dream.”

It’s sad for a minute, and I do my best to console her, but then I go right up to my room, close the door, and laugh until I’m done ... again. Good times!

Why...WHY???

Am I the only person whose children do VERY naughty things in the wee hours of the morning? From what we can piece together based on the evidence, the morning at our house went something like this: Lily got up to use the bathroom at some point (this would have been worthy of praise, since this was the first night she didn't wear a diaper to sleep and managed to keep her bed dry). From what we can tell, her billowing nightgown may have impeded her in getting to the toilet in time...so it was left in a soaking heap on the bathroom floor, along with her underwear and the innocent-bystander bathmat. However, something else must have gone awry, because there was also a trail of something-gross-that-rhymes-with-"floop" smeared on the toilet seat. Sigh.

Anyway.

Whether it was to reward herself for staying dry all night or to drown her sorrows about not getting to the toilet on time, we do not know -- but Lily then proceeded to the kitchen where she unscrewed the lid from the bottle of chocolate syrup and CONSUMED THE ENTIRE THING. Not kidding, it was a brand new bottle. Now, I say the entire thing; I'm referring to what was not spilled (which she *helpfully* opted to clean up (read: smear all over the place) with a kitchen dishrag) or left in sticky fingerprints on the chocolate chips and a box of SweeTarts, which she also sampled.

I can tell you this right now: I hate mornings enough without waking up to something like that.

Kids say the darndest things

For several years now, Amanda has told us that she is going to marry Brad, who is the son of Logan's best friend Clark. She has also informed us recently that she is going to be a surgeon (yes, that's right; a surgeon) and can only marry someone who is also going to be a surgeon. Yesterday, I watched Brad and his little sister Lori while Clark's wife Lisa attended a class. Logan gave a family home evening lesson on modest dress. He made the statement that dressing modestly helps us to make choices that will lead us to the temple -- and then showed a picture of the temple. At this point, Amanda became very excited, bouncing in her seat and saying, "Dad! Dad! I have something to say!" Once we were all listening, she said, "Brad wants to be a surgeon too!" She sort of had her eyebrows raised with the "you-know-exactly-how-significant-this-is" look on her face. Looking toward Brad, who had a total deer-in-the-headlights look on his face, I said, "Oh, is that right, Brad? Do you want to be a surgeon?" Amanda immediately whipped her head toward him and stared expectantly -- at which point he pasted a big grin on his face and emphatically nodded his head up and down. Amanda then turned back toward us, her expression one of complete satisfaction. Atta girl!

One more funny story that happened while they were here. Clark and Lisa were telling us how 2-year-old Lori refuses to say her own name. We were all attempting to get her to say it: "What's your name? Who are you?" etc. etc. Logan got right down on her level and, placing his index finger lightly on her chest, asked, "Who is this?" Lori looked down at her chest, then looked up smiling and said, "My boob!" Not exactly the response we were shooting for, but you gotta give the girl props for accuracy.