Outnumbered Two to One

My five year old is scared of the dark.

Because clearly that’s where the monsters lurk. Everyone knows that.

We’re working on this fear one day at a time. Our bedtime ritual consists of me kissing him and his brother good-night, him begging me to lay down in bed with him, then me promising to come back to check on him approximately every two minutes and make sure he hasn’t been eaten by something large and toothy.

He is always asleep by the time I make my first round, which is usually the ten minute mark. Since he technically does not tell time yet, I am not bound by the two minute constraint. Yes, I know, I’m a cheater.

The problem is not my five year old’s fear of the dark. The problem is tonight my toddler, having apparently caught wind of the lurking nocturnal beasties, proceeded to pitch a terrified fit the moment I attempted to leave the room. In his sweet toddler speak he very clearly said “monster” and “scared”. Then shrieked at the top of his lungs until I sat on the edge of the bed and promised not to leave.

Now a scared five year old is one thing. I can bargain, however irrationally, with a five year old.  A toddler, on the other hand, is not falling for a two minute monster rule. His grasp on the English language is somewhat tentative. I leave, he screams. There is no discussion. Unfortunately, it is infinitely easier to perch on the edge of a bed for fifteen minutes until he nods off, rather than listen to him scream for an hour until he either throws up or exhausts himself.

Sometimes, you’ve got to pick your battles.

Hopefully this won’t become a recurring theme. Just yesterday and for the past year, he’s gone to bed happily without a hitch. But all this talk of monsters has apparently worked its way in to his little brain and created a very dangerous wrinkle. One that threatens to blow our whole bed time routine out of the water.

I suppose we could always sleep with the lights on…

To add insult to injury, I was also summoned by my teen to kill a cockroach that was threatening her sanity…not to mention her bathroom time.

I hate roaches. I really, really, hate roaches.

I killed it, because I had to…what she doesn’t know is that I used the bottom of her sneakers.

Apparently I live in a house full of chickens, monsters and cockroaches.

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