We'll Leave The Light On For You

Mitchell is in another funk. He is such a funny kid. He will go weeks without any sort of issue and I will be convinced that he has grown out of something and is becoming so much easier to understand, when BLAM! he wakes up one morning, changed yet again!

This time, he is fearful Mitchell. He's not afraid of the dark exactly, but has a thing for turning lights on everywhere he goes, at all times of the day and night. I will be the first one downstairs in the morning to sneak in a cup of coffee before my little monsters are up, only to be greeted by the entire ground floor ablaze with lights! Knowing that first, I would never have turned that many lights on and second, I always turn all the lights off when I go to bed, I know Mitchell snuck downstairs sometime in the night to illuminate the place.

Last night, I woke up to all the lights on upstairs! That one even woke Matt (and that's not an easy thing to do!) Matt got up around 3am grumbling about being blinded in his sleep, only to find Mitchell wandering the hallway, making sure all the lights were on!

Even during the daylight, he prefers the lights all on. We have many unused rooms in our house that I check multiple times a day and sure enough, lights are all on.

Strangely, this funk of his follows right on the heals of his last one: turning all the lights off! I kept getting left in darkness in the basement if I tried to play down there. The boys assured me "this is how we like to play down here!" I would be cooking dinner in the kitchen and Mitchell would walk in, turning all the lights off for me with no explanation as to why the dark is better for cooking in. All movies needed to be watched in as much darkness as possible.

I just can't keep up with this guy! Mitchell being who he is, it is difficult to get a real reason from him as to why he currently needs all the lights on, even in the middle of the night when his eyes should be closed anyways. He will mumble something about hearing a monster or how he thinks our house might have ghosts in it. As his thoughts on this monster and ghost are not very organized or well-described though, I suspect he is just repeating to me some idea Ben has inadvertently put in his head in his effort to sniff out the root of the problem.

Whatever his reasons, I feel I have been patient and understanding enough and it is time to get over this. I am tired of him being afraid for no reason. Fear of this sort is not something I coddle my boys for. I will not let him sleep in my bed all night and I will not let him leave all the lights on. I will need to find some way to keep him from wandering the house all night, scared and wasting electricity. My boy was not created to be fearful.

My plan is to cut out all his favorite books and movies. Both my boys love spooky things: monsters, ghosts, and all manner of make-believe scariness. I have always been OK with this sort of thing because we have always been diligent about talking about the make-believe nature of it all. I have no problem with my boys pretending skeletons can walk and talk, or pretending Gabe the green monster lives and drools under their bed, or pretending a ghost lives on the third floor. That's just good fun!

Perhaps I have over-estimated Mitchell's ability to draw a solid line between make-believe and reality though. We will not be reading any of his favorite silly monster books for a while or watching any of his top faves as far as movies and shows go. We are back to PBS cartoons: Clifford, Dinosaur Train, Super Why... good shows (in my opinion) but certainly not the level of entertainment then have grown accustomed to.

Let's see if we can just "forget" about monsters for a while and see if that doesn't keep the lights off at 3am...

Operation Scare Mom

Mitchell can be a sneaky little boy. He likes to sneak up on me (and, I assume, others as well.) When I am in Jack's room feeding him a bottle before bed, Mitchell will slither in on his belly and pop up next to my chair. At night, he tip toes out of his room and peaks around the corner and down the stairs, trying to go unnoticed. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I will awaken for some reason and find him standing next to my bed, looking at me. (That one REALLY startles me!) When he plays hide-and-seek, he doesn't stay in one place, but sneaks around from place to place, staying one step ahead of or behind me. He likes to pretend to be invisible. He sometimes wears his invisible clothes to school and gets a kick out of the fact that no one even knew he was there! (I'd really like to witness that day at school...)

Yesterday, his sneakiness took a new form in that the goal was not to go unnoticed, but to make me jump. I was busy drying my hair in my bathroom, thinking I had made my "stay in your room for a bit" command understood. At one point, I turned my hair dryer off, flipped my hair back up, and there was Mitchell, harmonica at the ready. The moment my hair dryer was off, he blew that harmonica as loud as he could. I literally jumped. He thought it was hilarious and ran off to tell Ben every detail of his successful mission.

I sometimes don't understand Mitchell and am often puzzled by what he likes and what gets him excited, so when he does really crack up about something, it makes me laugh too, even if I am the victim of his pranks.

It Choked Us All Up A Bit

I just have to say, my favorite movie in a long time has got to be Toy Story 3.  We were lucky enough to borrow it from a friend today and after dinner tonight, we put it on for the boys.  Matt and I started out the movie immersed in our own activities: Matt reading his book, me on my computer.  

As I continued to not pay attention and get some things done while my boys were enraptured by the third and final chapter to what has got to be the best trilogy a child and his parent can watch together, I kept finding my attention drawn to the TV against it's will.  Every time I glanced at Matt, I noticed him in a similar state:  book in hand, held up to his face, but eyes glued to the TV in spite of himself.  

By the time we got to the "scary" part that I keep hearing parents warn against, I gave up any pretense at not being interested in it anymore and shut my computer.  I glanced at Ben during this part and he was close to tears and huddled up in a ball next to his dad, covered up to his eyes in his blankie.  There is nothing like a big, strong dad to help you through the intense parts.

But it was the ending that got to Matt and me.  I have not cried over a movie in some time now, but after a bit of holding the tears back, I finally let them flow.  Mitchell had climbed into my lap and was not facing me and Ben and Matt were in a similar position on a difference couch, so I felt it safe to let loose and let a few tears escape since no one was watching me anyways.

It was a touching ending to a wonderful three-part story and if you haven't seen these movies, I encourage you to watch them with a child if you can.  By the time the credits began, along with the credit entertainment that always accompanies Toy Story credits, I still couldn't turn around and face my family.  This is when Matt asked Mitchell if mommy was crying.  Mitchell whipped around, looked closely into my eyes, noticed the tears, I am sure of it, but answered "nope!" with a little smile on his face.  

I have to think if Matt knew enough to ask if I was crying, he must have been at least close himself.  

My New Dentist

I admit it - I have not been to the dentist in years, and my kids have never been to the dentist.  I have many excuses for this lapse in hygene including moving as often as I do, no sore teethe, feeling like I do a great job flossing, and my favorite - I just don't like going.  Well, as it is no longer just about my teeth, but about all the little teeth in my family, I finally made dentist appointments.  

Mitchell and I were up first and today was the day.  I will admit, I was nervous.  I have very weak teeth, and I knew it was not likely I would escape the cleaning without a second visit getting scheduled to come back and fix all that has gone wrong in my mouth.  Despite my general unease, I tried to make it sound exciting for Mitchell.  At first, he was excited to be going somewhere with me all by himself, but one look at that little room with all the equipment in it and he decided this was not where he wanted to be.  There is an aweful lot of complicated looking machinery in there, it's true.  

I went first to show him that it would not hurt and to show off what all the "scary machines" were for.  As I had to sit still facing forward with my mouth gaping open and full of all manner of cleaning and scraping and poking instruments, I couldn't really see him exactly, but I could see that the longer I sat there pretending to be having a great time for his sake, he was creeping farther and farther out of the room and into the hallway.  When I could finally turn my head and take a tiny peek at him, I found him huddled on the floor outside the room just barely peeking around the corner into the room to make sure the dentist hadn't finally finished me off.  

When it came time for him to climb up in the chair, he lost it.  He clamped both hands over his mouth and burst into tears.  "Later mommy, later!  I'll do it later!  I'm not ready!  I don't want him to look in my mouth!  I won't open it!"

It took some serious skill on the part of my dentist and myself, as well as plenty of goofing off with all the "tools" in there, trying to make him laugh and see it wasn't such a big deal, but we finally coaxed him to let him count his teeth and then bit by bit, brush them.  We almost had to reschedule, but in the end, we got his little chompers checked and cleaned.  

You'd think that after all the drama and fears and tears, he would want to forget about the dentist and his experience, but it has been the opposite.  He has been talking about it all day and even pretending to be a dentist himself!  I had to sit still for quite some time this afternoon and let him be my dentist.  He got all manner of tools out to work on my teeth.  Now we have no dentist tools.  We don't even have any doctor's tools, so he improvised.  I had quite the assortment of "tools" working on me - drill, measuring tape, blocks, a saw, flashlight, baseball, tinker toys, even part of a bbq.  Some tools were for "fixing," some were for "cleaning."  Others were for sucking the coffee off my teeth and fixing up my tongue and cheeks while he was in there.  He even labeled his shoes "dentist shoes."

It is good to know that while he seemed quite frightened and a bit traumatized by his first dentist visit, he came out of the ordeal with nothing but respect and excitement for the dental profession.