So we're on vacation with the family, all seven cousins and assorted aunts, uncles and grandparents, and the kid's sleeping on a little blanket nest in the corner of our room. The other morning, around 5, we heard a series of sad wails, then something I still think was, "I can't find the green one!"
I've always wondered what litle kids dream about, but whenever I've tried to ask the kid, she just replied with whatever I suggest to her. "Did you dream about books?" "Yeah." So I quickly abandonned that approach.
But this cry made me think: if mine are about being stuck in an office, and screwing up the electronic bill paying so the insurance gets cancelled, why wouldn't a 2-yo's anxiety dreams be about a matching game where none of the tiles match?
Everytime I ask my daughter what she dreams about, she tells me the sun and clouds.
Then she tells me that is what I dream about to.
If only.
We find that the dream is about the same each morning.
"What did you dream about?"
"Puzzles, puzzles at Max's house. Go to Max's house?"
"Maybe later"
"oh, good dream! mommy, daddy, cats there, so happy! grandma not there, she in okinawa. back soon, though."
One day I suggested to my daughter that she could go to sleep "and dream about dinosaurs" and ever since then when I ask what she's been dreaming about she says "dinosaurs."
But about 5:30 a.m. one morning we heard her cry out "I need a time-out." I don't know what she'd done in her dreams, but I doubt it involved dinosaurs.
A few weeks ago, one of my boys woke up crying "Brother ate my ice cream!" and he was pissed off for a good half hour.
Since my son usually sleeps in my bed with me, and since I often stay up ridiculously late reading scifi books in bed, I have lots of oppourtunity to hear my son dreaming. To a one, each dream I've observed him having, over the course of the last 3 1/2 years, that caused him to speak aloud have all been laughing dreams.
Most of the time he just laughs and giggles, clear as a bell, but sometimes he says things, as well. Last week he laughed and said, "No, don't get me!" I knew immediately he'd been dreaming about me and him having a tickle session in which I sing to him parts of a Laurie Berkner song ("I'm gonna catch you, you'd bettter run, I'm gonna catch you, here I come.") to which Kieran always laughingly protests "No don't catch me!" when I inevitably catch him and give him a tickle.
It's such a relief to know he's having happy dreams every night.