The guarding dog

It’s no secret that our kids treat my bed as their own. We broke DD’s habit of climbing into it in the middle of the night about a year ago (mostly SubHub’s achievement), and except for a very rare occasion, she stays in her bed all night long. DS is another story, and every night around 3 a.m. he climbs over me and stays in my bed until he wakes up for the day. In the past two weeks, however, DD crawled into my bed twice. Unlike DS, she just quietly climbs in and stays until DS shows up for his shift, and then leaves.

Last night SubHub went into the kids’ room and came out with the stuffed dog DD took to bed with her. “Look what they did to the poor animal, “he said. I looked up and saw SubHub’s belt wrapped tightly around the toy’s neck. “Somebody needs to tell them they shouldn’t do it.” I diplomatically withheld a comment: only two days ago SubHub was kicking the same dog all over the living room floor for reasons unknown to me or mankind, and of course, in front of the kids. Stuffed animal cruelty (big no-no in my parents’ house) is not on his list of sins, which made SubHub’s concern about the fate of DD’s dog even more perplexing. I hope he wanted to tell the kids that belts are not toys and didn’t start getting senile ..

Then we went to sleep, and a few hours later I heard someone climbing into my bed. I realized it was DD and immediately started thinking, “Great. There we go again. Pretty soon there will be two of them here and I would actually have to ask DD to leave (which I hate. It really isn’t fair that she gets to leave and he gets to stay all the time. But she cooperates, so I ask her. Nighttime parenting is just not my strong point, hence my sleeping arrangements.)”

DD, however, was not settling in. She wanted to ask me something. “Mommy, will you help me find my dog in the morning?” What? Where am I? What dog? Who are you? But instead I answered, “Yes, sure sweetie.” (Just don’t ask me for a drink, or light in the bathroom, or anything else, I really don’t want to get up. Just curl up next to me and fall asleep fast.) But DD did not fall asleep fast. Without further ado, she climbed off my bed and disappears into the darkness while I all of a sudden found myself wide awake with questions roaming my mind. What just happened? Why did she leave? All by herself? Was she even awake during the entire incident? And my person favorite: HOW CREEPY WAS THAT???? If you weren't there, it's probably hard to imagine, but take my word for it, it was.