Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

A while back, I wrote about Ty using “bad dreams” as a way to gain entry into our bed at night; well, we solved that problem pretty easily and now if he has a bad dream, we know that it’s genuine.  But as you all know, once you solve one problem another one is bound to pop up sooner or later.  That new problem is Tre, I think he somehow picked up on how the bad dream thing was working out for Ty and decided to try his hand at it.  I must admit, his scheme is working out a little better than Ty’s did.  All Ty wanted was to get in our bed, but Tre wants his 40 acres and a mule! 

For the past week, my sleep has been interrupted by screeching screams in the baby monitor at about 4am.  When I say interrupted, I mean I hear the screams, tap Fefe a few times and mumble “it’s the boy again”, and then spend the next 5-10 mins trying to get back to sleep.  I know, I know, BIG interruption right?  Fefe should really be writing this post, because she’s the one who’s royally getting screwed over.  Once she wakes up and goes into Tre’s room, the first course of action is to attempt to calm him down.  Usually this works by just rubbing his back & talking to him quietly.  If plan A doesn’t work, plan B is to bring him a cup of milk, and then he’s typically out like a light.  Well recently, plan A & B have been failing horribly.  He just continues to scream and cry regardless of what soothing technique she applies, so we came to the conclusion that he was having bad dreams.

Since nothing was working to calm him down, Fefe started taking him downstairs so that he wouldn’t wake up the other members of our family fortunate enough to still be sleep. How thoughtful of her, she truly is the best!  The first time they went downstairs, she turned on “Mickey Mouse”, got some milk and cookies and magically he stopped screaming.  I mean, he hit the jackpot, who wouldn’t stop crying? This same scenario occurred for the next 3 days.  After that she tried something different, just lying in his bed with him for a while until he calmed down.  This is where we determined that these so called nightmares may not be all that scary.  Tre must have thought that Fefe fell asleep because after a few minutes he weaseled his way from underneath her arm and crept quietly to his door, which was cracked open a bit.  He goes to the door, looks back at Fefe to make sure she’s still sleep and then leaves his room and continues down the hall towards our bedroom.  He peeps his head in and lets out a quiet “Dada”.  By this time I was knocked out cold, so I didn’t hear anything. Tre waits for a minute to see if I would respond, once I didn’t he started heading for the stairs and that’s when Fefe busted him.  He didn’t realize that she had gotten up and was watching him the entire time.  She asks him “where do you think you’re going” and his response is “Mickey Mouse”.

Personally, I think if I was having a nightmare that was bad enough to cause the shrieking noises that this kid makes, I wouldn’t be in the right state of mind to creep around the house and perpetuate a plan to sneak downstairs for my Mickey Mouse and cookies fix.  The only explanation is that he’s faking and last night erased any doubt that Fefe and I had.  Last night, I was actually the one having a crazy dream.  Something about having long hair, but that’s beside the point.  Because of my dream, I woke up around 3:45 and what do I hear in the monitor?  I hear movement and toys, Tre was in his room playing.  About 15 mins later, the screams started; this time I went to investigate myself.  I go into the room and he’s lying on his bed, eyes closed, just screaming.  Now, I had just heard him playing with toys, so I knew there was no bad dream.  This little guy has been playing us ever since that first night.  So I inform Tre that I’m on to him and it’s not gonna work this time.  I tell him to cut it out and go to sleep, he looks at me with tears in his eyes and says “Mickey Mouse, No?” then lays back down and goes to sleep.  WTF, is Mickey Mouse so important that an almost 2 year old needs to create an elaborate scheme to watch him at 4 in the morning? Most people crave snacks in the middle of the night, but Tre craves Mickey Mouse.  I don’t know what subliminals Disney is working into the programming of that show, but whatever it is, it sure is working!