Nelson's Nightmare

I was lying awake last night, 4:00 am, when I heard the all too familiar squeak of the boys' door opening, pitter-patter of little feet coming down the hall. I was in the process of digging through my bag of tricks for help in getting myself back to sleep after initially being awoken by our geriatric dog drinking from the toilette (a no-no) and also needing a middle-of-the-night potty break (the dog not me). Anyhow, back to the story...

From the door I hear, "Can I sleep with you guys? I had a nightmare and it scared me..." I scoop Nelson up, "What was your nightmare about?" He replies, "I don't remember." and nestles in between us.

My chances of sleep in the near future are most definitely shot at this point. Over the course of the next hour I have elbows, feet, and a chin in my back and side. Sandy tufts of hair in my mouth and tickling my nose. And, most annoying, the intermittent itching of countless mosquito bites. When I decide that this can go on no longer, I wake him, he climbs on my back, and we head back to his bed, where we begin the cycle again until he falls asleep and I return to my bed, 5:30 am, and thank goodness also fall to sleep.

Today at lunch...

Dad: "Nelson, what was you nightmare about last night? Decepticons (of the Transformer variety)?"

Henry replies, "no."

Nelson says, "I don't remember."

"Well, clearly Henry does..."

Me: "Nelson, does Henry know about the dream?"

"Yes, but he is not telling."

So, we threaten both of them until Nelson spills the beans...

"I was running from these monsters and they had these cages and unless you counted to 35 you were locked in the cages forever. It was so scary!"

Dad: "And, you could not count to 35, right?"

"Right."

You see Henry will sit and count to 100 for anyone that will give him the opportunity. Nelson, on the other hand, will count to 10 and then gets silly and starts making up silly numbers and skips right to 1000 sometimes. We are not sure if he does not know how or if he just thinks it a fun game. I think this dream has confirmed that he, in fact, needs to continue working on his counting skills.

I get a kick out of this, not because he was scared of course, but because he knew better than to share this bad dream with us, but still felt compelled to share it with his brother. Now he knows that we will be spending extra time on his counting lessons, which he clearly is not looking forward to.