Zoo dreams...

Sleep...ahhhhhh...the memory of a night of uninterrupted sleep is tantalizing as I imagine my head on my pillow, hair matted and all crazy looking, arm numb from sleeping on it wrong and cheek creases from my pillow because I literally haven't moved for 10 hours.

Alas....that truly is just a memory.  Nowadays if I get 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep I consider myself pretty darn lucky.  I don't know if it would be any better if my deployed soldier was here instead of bunking down in his little tent in Afghanistan.

My nightly wake up call is always the fault of little Bella.  She's got crazy animal dreams in her little head and right around 2AM she is shouting and hollering all about them. 

I'm guessing that even if John were home he'd sleep right through her hollering...especially now that he's learned to sleep through the noise of a chinook helicopter landing... 

Sheesh...the more I think about this I believe this deployment has brought me a lifetime of nightime toddler duty.  (Adding that to my list of reasons why deployments stink!) 

But...back to my little stars in the sky dreamy zoo keeper...Luckily these dreams are not nightmares.  She's not actually afraid of the animals.  She's only once woken up in tears and that was when there were monsters...but more often than not she's apparently had a great dream and wants to tell me all about it. 

Just take this past week as an example...

Sunday it was monkeys.  2AM my eyes pop wide open when I hear, "Mama! Mama! Monkey eating nanas!" 

Monday it was snakes.  2:45AM I am roused from my sleep with, "Mama!  Mama!  Snake SSSSSSSSSS!  Mama!  Snake SSSSSSSSSS!"

Tuesday it was elephants.  2:17AM a trumpeting, "Pbbbbbbbbbbbbt" followed by, "Mama!  Elephants!  Elephants!  Pbbbbbbbbbt"

Now here it is Wednesday and I'm wondering what animal from the menagerie in my daughter's little mind is going to waken me tonight.  I'm kind of hoping its crocodiles.  She's quite taken with crocodiles these days and I can imagine her excitment would come with lots of clapping and exagerrated gestures of a crocodile's mouth snapping closed

I probably didn't help anything by reading her "Two in the Zoo " (a fabulous book for toddler's in case you haven't ever seen it...) about 15 times before bed tonight...

And so when the shouting starts...what do I do?  I've tried rolling over and ignoring her...she amazingly just gets louder.  I've tried scolding...but really, its so cute when she's babbling about a penguin that even at 2AM I can't really be mad at her.

Instead, I roll myself out of bed, trip my way into her room and let her tell me all about her dream while I snuggle her back down in her bed, turn on her twilight turtle and lullaby CDs and send her back into dream land...

Goodnight...