Bad dreams

Rachel has always been a good sleeper, if prone to one or two bad dreams. A few times we've had a timid knock on our bedroom door only to find her outside saying she was scared, and one of us got up and lay in bed with her until she calmed down, but that hasn't happened for a while -- until recently.

Over the past few weeks, she has come downstairs (one time, naked and trembling and clutching her favorite stuffie, a rabbit named Stitch that Sidney gave her) while we've been watching TV, whimpering about a bad dream. The first time, it was that we had been swept up in a tornado and then got stung by an asp (yes, she used that term). The second time, Drew was at the gym and I was in the study, and I had to take her in my lap on the couch because she had dreamed that Mommy and Daddy had lost their jobs. I had to spend quite a bit of time reassuring her that even if that extremely unlikely event happened, that we live in an area with lots of opportunities, so we'd probably be able to find other jobs.

After the one where she came down naked and trembling (last week, when I was trying to catch up on  "Downton Abbey" episodes) I offered to give her my green-and-back flannel shirt, which Drew gave me a long time ago, along with another one. They'd been his, so they're really big on me, but I find them comforting nonetheless. I told Rachel about the time that Grandma and Grandpa took me to Cape Cod for vacation, and my crib was near a window where you could see the flashing light from the lighthouse, which terrified me for some reason. So Mom and Dad came into the bedroom and tried to calm me down, but I couldn't stop crying. So Dad pulled off one of his big, cozy sweaters and put it in the crib, and I cuddled up next to it and was able to get myself to sleep.

And so now I've done the same thing with Rachel, and she hasn't had a nightmare since.