Nightmares and storms.

I need to start recording Ethan's sleep pattern, so you guys will have to deal with that part of this. :)

He woke up again, beginning Monday at 5:00am. There was the usual...sobbing, wailing, panicked and you could tell once he "found" his blankie because the sobs turned to gasps and then an eventual subside. All told, it lasted 2 minutes, max. Last night, it was 11:00pm and he had the usual with the difference being that he would not stop. There was no subsiding, so I went to him. He was in full blown panic mode and laying on his back with tears streaming down his face. He reached out for me and I grabbed him. He held on for dear life as we crawled into bed (yes, our bed...I'm pregnant and tired and something just felt different this time). He laid in my arms, facing me, for 45 minutes. Each time I opened my eyes to check, he was staring at me with his thumb firmly planted in his mouth. He did not go back to sleep. Jason came upstairs at almost midnight and I had him put little man back in his own bed. The crying lasted all of about a minute and a half and he was out for the rest of the night. We go through this every few months without explanation and it's really time to start looking at some sort of pattern. I can't think of any recent changes in our lives and I haven't added anything new to their diet. I'm thinking, perhaps, that he is just overstimulated? I turned off their Ionic Pro thinking the blue light that it emits might be freaking him out, so we'll see if that works.

We had a wicked storm pass through here tonight. It was Figgy and the Professor's first really big storm. In fact, they had us under a tornado watch and warning for almost half an hour, so that should give you an idea of what the weather was like. We have all of the windows open and turned out the lights to watch the lightning light up the sky. Ethan was mesmerized by it and kept climbing into the big chair to move the curtains and stare outside. Elizabeth, however, stood in the middle of the living room, looking at me as though I was making the noise, and screaming, "OH NOOOOO!" She ran around in circles with her hands on her cheeks, screaming, "OH NO" and "bye-bye!" She refused to come to me for comfort, only looking at me with this look of horror as if to say, "Why are you doing this, mommy?"

It was hysterical. Does that make me a bad parent, that I'm laughing at my daughter's fear? I did tell my husband that he could sit next to me on the couch and I'd hold his hand, since he's deathly afraid of thunderstorms. Between him and the dog, I think I need to get a prescription for valium, or something along those lines. :)