Is That Ironic?

A couple of nights ago Jacob woke me up at about 3 a.m. to tell me that he had a nightmare. First of all let me tell you that my children are pretty scared to wake me up in the middle of the night, because I am not nice when I have been woken up. Cole says that he never tells me when he has a nightmare because, "I know you don't care," he says. I do care, but it is hard for me to muster up mercy and caring when I have just been awakened from a deep sleep. So, Jacob must have been pretty scared to come wake me up. I told him he could bring his pillow and blanket in our room and sleep on our floor. I have NO PROBLEM going back to sleep after having been awakened, so I was already asleep again before he even got back in our room. About 5 minutes later he tapped my arm to ask me if he could use the bathroom. Getting a little more irritated, I told him that of course he could go to the bathroom. I fell asleep again before he got done and came back to the room. About 10 minutes later he tapped my arm again to let me know that my floor was hard and it was hurting his arm. Even more irritated, I tried to talk nicely and tell him to just go back to bed then. He said that he couldn't do that because he would be scared in there.....I was thinking, "if you wake me up again you will be scared in here," but I didn't voice that to my son. I told him to go back to sleep and not wake me up again. I had already lost a good 20 minutes of sleep, and I didn't want to lose anymore. Thankfully I was able to sleep the rest of the night without being awakened by him.

When I got up in the morning, I went to the bathroom to find a present for me in the toilet. I then remembered that Jacob had gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night, so I questioned him as to whether or not he had left that surprise for me. He looked at me bewildered and told me that the reason he didn't flush was because (now this was very thoughtful of him)...... HE DIDN'T WANT TO WAKE ME UP!

Christmas 2007

This year when I asked the kids to write their letters to Santa listing what they wanted, my ulterior motive was to have a list to give to Peepaw and Granma. It proved helpful with Cole and Annalisa's lists, but my Jacob does have a great imagination! He not only asked for the Lamborghini that he could drive, but as I mentioned in an earlier blog, he was also dead-set on Super Powers! He didn't care which ones, he just wanted Super Powers! Sadly, that is not something that Santa delivered to our house on Christmas Eve, but I honestly don't think he even noticed because the only thing he mentioned that he didn't get was a bike---you know, one of the "last minute, 3 days before Christmas" add-ons to the Christmas list! We got to spend the days leading up to Christmas with Peepaw and Granma, and the kids really enjoyed the time with them. It snowed and the wind was FREEZING, but still we went out and enjoyed the town. On Christmas Eve we had a special service at our church, and aside from me allowing my kids to hold those tiny candles and get wax dripped on their little hands, thus burning them during the singing of Silent Night (it wasn't silent anymore!) it was very good! Hey, at least they didn't catch their hair on fire while their Grandaddy was praying---Jeffrey!!! On Christmas Eve Ben and I were sleeping on a cot and the couch in the living room (because we were nice enough to give up our bed to our poor old parents) and Annalisa informed us that if Santa came down the chimney we were not to talk to him or acknowledge him in any way or else she wouldn't get presents. Man, that was difficult since I have been waiting all my life to see the guy in action, but I kept my eyes closed and slept! Before we went to bed, Cole wrote a message in the snow that said "Santa, stop here!" and I think Annalisa put her name in the snow too so Santa would know who he was stopping for! Now, when we were kids we woke up early and counted the minutes until 6:00 a.m. which was when mom and dad would wake up.....but my kids have never done that. They have slept as late as 8:00 on Christmas morning, and even though I am sometimes up before that I have never had a problem going back to sleep so they can rest. But this year, Dad and Lynn were up around 5 getting their showers and stuff, and at 5:45 I went to check on the kids, who were still sleeping soundly. I said to myself that I had a good hour and half to 2 hours before they would get up, and went back to sleep. Exactly 15 minutes later they were ALL by the tree with Peepaw and Granma looking at everything and still trying to wake up--they had a little extra help getting up so early! We did the birthday cake for Jesus and then opened presents. During the opening of presents we realized that it was SNOWING! I knew we would have a white Christmas because there was already snow on the ground, but we had an ACTUAL "it's snowing!" white Christmas!! It was beautiful! We took Dad and Lynn back to the airport after lunch and said our good-byes, and all of the kids were asleep in the car before we got there!