Setting: It is 3:30 a.m. and everyone is sleeping soundly. Suddenly, Nathan starts yelling and sobbing (presumably having a nightmare), so I hustle to his room to find out what’s wrong.
Me: “Nathan! Nathan! Honey, what’s wrong?”
Nathan: (still sobbing) “Want … take … bath … “ (still crying)
Me: “You want to take a bath?”
Nathan: (COMPLETELY stops crying and becomes totally calm) “Yeah!”
Me: (baffled) “Nathan, it’s nighttime. It’s dark outside. Daddy and Emily are still sleeping. It’s too late for a bath, honey”.
Nathan: (starts to cry again)
Me: “Do you want to wash your hands, instead?”
Nathan: (totally calm and happy again) “Yeah!”
Nathan washed his hands and went back to sleep without too much of a fuss.
30 minutes later, he started sobbing again. This time I sent J in to deal with it, since my attempts obviously failed. About 5 minutes later, I hear Nathan stop crying and J returns.
Me: “So what was wrong that time?”
J: “He wanted to buy new shoes”.
Me: “New shoes? That was it?”
J: “Yeah, I told him we could buy him some tomorrow and then he went back to sleep”.
We both spent a few moments chuckling and then went back to sleep.
Those are the times that I would KILL for a window into Nathan’s brain (or for him to be older and verbal enough to tell me later what was going on!). He’s had a lot of anxiety issues lately, some of which involve the bath, so perhaps he was hoping for a second try at a happier bathtime? And we had been talking about buying him new shoes, so maybe something about that was disturbing him?
I have no idea. But there are very few things that involve crying children at 4 in the morning AND make me laugh, so I’ll take whatever comes my way! 