Okay who invited the undead to the party?

Tonight was a big night in our house. Both kids mastered tying shoes....okay well maybe "mastered" is the wrong word. They both now know all the steps and can tie their own shoes more or less. It wasn't always pretty at the end but they did it. It was actually a really big deal and we even called Grandma and Grandpa to brag. I mean who wouldn't? For my kids this was huge.....and the fact that I taught them both at the same time.....side by side.....and didn't completely lose my mind was also worth celebrating. Yeah sanity!!

We also watched a movie. I cooked a dinner from scratch that both kids ate....I mean licked the plate clean. And our big finale? Me reading 2 chapters from a novel to them for bed. Could today have gone any better? Okay well I completely forgot about my dog at my parents house. Then when my Mom called to gently remind me that it was 5 o'clock and he was still there I was on the phone with the district manager of my favourite shoe store. If you missed my last post "Back away from the shoes lady" you may want to break here and read it so you'll know what the heck I'm even talking about. Anyway, it turns out that the guy who suggested that parents who waited to teach their kids to tie shoes were kind of lazy (as I was buying shoes to teach my kids to tie their laces) was indeed the store manager. Awesome. And if you think that is interesting you might be equally intrigued to find out that Ms. Wag her finger in my face lady was the Assistant Manager. Double Awesome. At least the Manager was trying to be friendly in a misguided way. I can forgive the ignorance because I think he was genuinely unaware that he had insulted me. However for the assistant manager to be the finger wagger was a bit of a shock. I mean how bad do you have to be at your job to NOT be promoted in this store?

Anyway, so I forgot my dog but otherwise everything else went so seamlessly you could forgive me for becoming complacent that tonight was going to be easy. I mean the kids even remembered to brush their teeth without being reminded. That has never happened at my house in the history of time. Oh sure they always remember when they are sleeping over at Grandma and Grandpas but at home....never.....ever have they both remembered by themselves. After stories the kids willingly went to their rooms and as is our usual routine I spent a few minutes with each one to tuck them in. Andrew had been first in bed tonight because he is trying out his new sleeping bag. He has a class trip in a few weeks and I thought I should get him used to as many things that he will have on this trip as possible so that it's not one big horrible transition for him. He hates changes and sleeping in a new sleeping bag, in a new place, with a new portable sized pillow, in the dark with no nightlight, with his classmates and not his cat, and me being a full hours drive away could be a bit of an adjustment. So I thought I'd be smart and bring out the sleeping bag now. Drew had rushed into his room and climbed in. Camryn was giggling hysterically in her room about some scene from the movie How to Train Your Dragon and repeating the punch line of the joke over and over laughing even louder and longer each time.....I decided to give her a few minutes and headed into Andrew's room first. I zipped up his sleeping bag and tucked him in. Then I headed in to corral Camryn who had now become Nightfury who is one of the dragons from the movie. Of course Camryn no longer talked because of course dragons don't talk and she was pouncing and bouncing about her room. As I came in she leaped from the closet onto her bed and started to nuzzle my arm. It took a few minutes to get her settled. I've become rather skilled at putting a variety of animals to bed. Maybe one of these days she'll be a human again and I'll get to tuck Camryn in. Oh to dream.

So usually after tucking in the second child...or in this case one child and then an animal I usually do a quick peak in on the first child to blow them a kiss. When I did this I could see Andrew looking rather upset. I went over to his bed and asked him what was wrong. Typically he gets upset if I spend more time in his sister's room then I did in his. Since it had taken awhile to tame my dragon....good pun right? Sorry I couldn't resist. I figured this was what had upset Drew. However he said "I'm worried about zombie attacks because all my other visions have come true lately". He went on to say that he had a vision that he would get a sleeping bag right before a zombie attack. Okay, kind of random. And here I just gave him a new sleeping bag. What a nice Mom. I just set into motion a full scale attack of the undead on my own kid. Aren't I Mother of the Year!! I will say that Andrew does tend to be dramatic at times. It's kind of his way of engaging people and it's his own quirky thing so I wasn't sure if this was an attempt to get a bit more attention or if he was really scarred. Despite the drama he does tend to have some real fears about seemingly impossible things. There have been times when he needed to have a fan blowing on his face at night to protect him from aliens, and he's had to have his bed positioned a certain way in the room to protect him from the vortex that is apparently in his floor, and then there were the venetian blinds that had to touch the window pane so that ghosts wouldn't come into his room. I could have told him that they would probably just go through the wall instead and avoid the window panes altogether but I didn't want to have to pay for years of therapy sessions so I kept my mouth shut.

So how do you convince an 11 year old that a zombie attack tonight is somewhat unlikely despite me giving him a sleeping bag? He knows that there is no such thing as zombies and I'm pretty sure that it would be a bad idea to come up with a "zombie spray" at this point because then he'd know I was full of crap about zombies not being real. I mean who would invent a spray unless they were actually real? So no spray for us. It took me an extra 30 minutes to get him calmed down and tucked into bed but I'm sure he'll be awake for an hour or two as he waits for the undead to rise from the yard and come looking for him. As I was leaving the room Andrew said "Did you ever get scarred of monsters in the olden days Mom?" I had to think for a moment because after all I'm apparently so ancient that to think way back to the olden days takes awhile. "Yes honey a long time ago" I said. I wanted to be reassuring. "I'm not afraid of zombies or monsters anymore" I continued. But as I left the room I thought "Mom's just scarred of crazy shoe store ladies honey". I wonder if anyone has a spray for that?