Revelations on a Monday

Monday - I can't believe I actually survived it. Those grandiose thoughts I have had on more than one occasion in the past year that I would really like to have a third child are almost completely gone. Unless of course we win the lotto - and you actually have to buy a ticket in that which I gave up doing a long time ago.

It was of course due to lack of sleep. We went to bed at 10pm not a bad time to retreat really and in between then and 5 am there were 9, yes NINE separate wakeups and not just wakeup, roll over and go back to sleep. Eight wakeups involved getting out of bed. One of them for P actually involved driving and another one for me involved my delivering some harsh words to Elliot at around 4am. And can you believe it the children were not even sick!

For Elliot it was nightmares which caused him to wake up something I am quite sympathetic as well as empathetic about. I feel he is reaching the phase of his youth where death and war concern him most of the time and especially at night. I recall having the same experiences as a child - I was petrified my mother would drown because I knew she couldn't swim and war was something I would dwell on till I was so frightened I was completely paralysed. I knew I was just feeding off my fears night after night but did not feel that I could confide in my mother or father.

I tried to give Elliot some advice on how to deal with his fears - I hope I was right. I told him that I used to visualize a big chest of metal drawers with locks on every drawer. I would visualize opening each drawer from top to bottom though closing each drawer before opening the next and in the very bottom drawer I would put my thoughts about death and war. In order to access those thoughts I had to open and close each and every drawer with a key. I asked him to put his "bad thoughts" in a drawer like that and lock it up and it would be his choice to unlock that drawer and take out those thoughts. I hope I was empowering him or was I just telling him how to avoid things? All I know is that it got me over being frightened to live when I was his age.

Back to Elliot's fixation with death, we actually had a discussion in the car the other day which involved listing between us all the ways a person could die. This was prompted by my driving past a cemetery. I did say to Elliot that I thought it wasn't the happiest of conversations to be having and he assured me that he wanted to know what the most dangerous way to die was so he could avoid it. He decided in the end that going to war and climbing were likely to end in the most tragedy.

He usually finds a way to pry things out of me. He once asked me how the child lock was operated on the door. I avoided telling him as I didn't want him disabling it and later he said "I just want to know about the lock on the door Mum so I can use a childlock for my child" I felt that I was endangering the life of my future grandchild so I told him how to operate it.

As usual I start writing about one thing and end up writing about something else completely. It was the interruptions on the Monday which revealed to me that perhaps I really don't want a third child. I know it was wishful thinking but it took Monday to confirm to me that I am not cut out for all of these wakeups. Oh yes the driving - P had to pick up my sister's housemate poor girl. She is staying by herself and she phoned us around midnight because she had convinced herself that someone was stalking her and wanted to spend the rest of the night in our spare bedroom so he kindly came to her rescue.

Oh and the harsh words for Elliot - the final straw was his asking me to please come in and turn off his television instead of his turning it off himself!