Kids should come equipped with cow bells

No nightmare, no scary story, no horror movie will ever frighten you as badly as being awoken by your child in the middle of the night in near-pitch black darkness. The best part? She doesn't announce her arrival until she's three inches from my face.

"Mama."

[pause]

"Mama."

[pause]

"Mama."

[longer pause]

"MAMA!"

me: "Holy shit! What?!?!"

Then I realize it's her and she's at the side of my bed with an unspoken request to sleep in between Rob and I. So with my heart beating a mile a minute, I pick her up, haul her across my body and plop her down in the middle.

This happens maybe once a week these days and I'm thankful that's all it is. Most parents would be annoyed that once a week, they got zero sleep. Me? It's the bomb. She used to do this every. single. night. Now that she's sleeping in her own room (well, for almost four months now) she sleeps through the night more often than not. Yay!

Of all her make-mommy-fall-out-of-bed-in-fright moments, nothing beats what happened this past Saturday. Friday and Saturday nights, it was hotter than hell's bells here and it didn't cool down much at night. We don't have central air in this apartment, so we rely on box fans and ceiling fans to keep cool. If it cools down at night, we open up all the windows and let the night air cool us. Great for the electric bill, total suckfest for us.

Anyway, we decided to camp out in the living room those two nights (okay, we camped out Sunday night too, but that's because Beth fell asleep on the couch with her pillow and I didn't have the heart to move her) with all fans on high. We have a really big sectional couch - about nine feet on the long end, six feet on the short end - so Rob slept on the long end and Beth and I shared the short end. I fell into a deep, deep sleep. I was in the middle of an already-scary dream and all of a sudden, in my dream, I heard crying. It was really out of place in the dream so I started looking (in my dream) for the origin of the crying. The crying got louder. Finally, my eyes pop open and I see a head holding a seemingly-large obect looking down at me, an orange and yellow glow around them.

I figured this was it. This is the big one (for those of you who've watched, it's from "Sanford & Son")! Then I regained my senses and realized it was Beth, standing behind the couch, holding the toilet paper, asking for help. She'd apparently woken and needed to go to the bathroom but couldn't handle the whole process by herself.

Damn kids need cow bells.