Mmf, wha?

I went to bed last night feeling pretty good. Alex is weaned, so Matt and I are back to taking turns getting up with the kids. And this morning was Matt's turn. I was happily anticipating being able to stay in bed until the alarm went off at 6. Ahhh.

Except that Penny woke up at 12:45 with a bad dream. And she was up again at 4. And she begged me to stay with her when I tucked her in from that one.

"Just for a minute. ...You need to close your eyes and go back to sleep."

"I can't. When I sleep, I have bad dreams."

"What kind of bad dreams, sweetie?"

"...Daddy was hurting my fingers with his teeth."

Wince. "Oh, sweetie, you know Daddy would never really do that, right? It's just a dream." She nodded, but still was reluctant to close her eyes. "What if I give you a new dream in your ear?"

"Okay. You have to take the bad dream out first."

So I mimed, fishing around in her ear for the bad dream, and throwing it out the door. "Get out of here, bad dream. Penny doesn't want you! What kind of happy dream would you like?"

"I think eating watermelon for dessert."

"That sounds like fun!"

"Yeah! And Batman will come to visit."

"Okay, I'll give you that dream." I blew on her ear (isn't this how dreams get into everyone's heads?) and kissed her and went back to bed.

But by this point, I'd woken up enough to start my brain moving. I was still mostly awake at 4:30 when Alex started coughing. He'd cough a couple of times and make a little noise, and then go quiet for a few minutes, then do it again. Around 5:15, he started talking in earnest. At 5:20, I nudged Matt, and he got up.

I finally got back to sleep, but it was restless. I dreamed I was in this... reenactment village, or something, trying to find clothes I could wear to work, except I kept getting distracted by the shows. There was more to it, but I won't bore you with it. Suffice to say, it wasn't exactly a restful dream. When the alarm went off at 6, I could barely walk straight to go turn it off.

On the plus side, I got to work early enough this morning that I'm not going to feel guilty for running out at lunch to get pre-approved for a new iPhone.