Creepy Kids

 As I stood, in my Pj's, looking at my closet this morning, I felt a presence.  I was deep in concentration thinking about what I would wear today, but this eerie feeling wouldn't go away.  I started to focus on it and became vaguely aware of eyes watching me.  I turned around, with the intent to make the feeling go away and there was my 6 year old, standing in the doorway, sucking his thumb.  "Good Morning" I whispered and he smiled and walked away.

  There is an instant of panic, as small as a pin prick, that flashes through me between the moment when I realize that I was being watched and the moment when I realize it was just my son.  This also happens to me when the kids wake me in the middle of the night. I jump! It can’t be healthy for children who are already scared from a nightmare to wake up a jumpy mother. They probably feel like they brought their dream with them and it scared me too. I even realize my child is trying to wake me somewhere in my unconscious and still jump upon waking. I’m not sure what jolts me.  Maybe it’s the kids eerie way of creeping into a room quietly.  If my husband wakes me up coming to bed, I hear his clodhoppers on the wood floor before he gets there.  But the kids are stealthily silent. I’m convinced they could work night ops.  But not Seal Team Six, because I try to teach them that killing is wrong and I hope that they are much older than 4 and 6 before they realize the world is full of hypocrites and I am among them.

  In other news....

Benjamin used the word “nocturnal” casually and correctly in a sentence the other day.  In the same setting he explained that he understood something was not real because it was “fiction”.  What a smart little boy. We had a lesson in title pages and why books have them, last night. He asks such brilliant questions. We discussed the need to practice reading this summer so that he can move closer to reading his own chapter books at will.  This will lessen his dependency on me, and I’m overjoyed and sad at the same time.

Juliet corrected me last night when I said that two books had the same “writer.”  She said “author.” Technically we were both correct, but her word was definitely better. She is loving the Junie B. Jones books. I’m so excited to have found something that engages her attention.  It’s funny, she picks up on reading easier than Ben, but she doesn’t have the passion for books that he does.  I do believe that it will come with time.  I think where Ben finds enchantment in leaving his world to visit another, Juliet may find intrigue in the writing styles of different authors as examples of how she can tell her own stories.