Along came a spider...

When I was little, I remember seeing a real live monster in my bedroom. We were in the farm house and I was sleeping in the big room. So....I think that made me 5 or so? (Nana? Papa? Help?) Anyway - I looked across the room and I was certainly certain that there was a monster sitting in the chair looking at me. But here's the strange part. As certain as I was that there was a monster there, I was curious enough that I wanted to get closer and get a better look at it. I remember staring at him for the longest time and he never moved. Maybe that was why I was so brave? Well you can guess where this is going. It was not a real monster. It was a coat on the chair crumpled in just the right way and lit just the right way by the moonlight. Ever since then I have not been bothered by the dark. (Now a haunted house is a completely different matter. I hate those places).

Camille comes in our room about once a week telling us that she has had a bad dream. Usually I give her a hug and a kiss and she's back in bed and all is well. Sometimes the next morning I'll ask her if she remembers her dreams and she usually doesn't. But this morning she came in telling me about her bad dream. She must have just woken up because she knew all the details. She said this:

I was dreaming that I was playing with my friend Mackenzie on the slide and we found a spider web. Mackenzie tried to get rid of the spider web but then the spider attacked her and went inside her mouth and started pushing out all of her teeth. I tried to help her but then the spider got inside me and tried to get out by eating my tummy.*

Okay - that is WAY scarier than my monster. I promise we do not let her watch the SciFi channel.

*Mommy note. If I were a dream interpreter (and I am not) this is how I would interpret her dream. When she and Claire play outside they almost always find a spider web underneath the slide. They always do their little girl scream and I tell them just to get a stick and get rid of it. The part about the teeth is just because she has lost two teeth now and checks her other ones every five minutes to see if any of them are loose. The spider eating her tummy is because she was hungry. She did not eat very much for dinner the night before and she had this dream right before she woke up for the morning. I'm guessing her tummy was growling. Now why she couldn't have dreamt all of this with flowers and butterflies instead of big scary spiders probably has something to do with Freud and things I do wrong as a mother.