Writers Workshop - part 1 - Sleepwalking....

Today's letter is the letter W ... and is brought to you by the number 6, and Mama Kat! It's never to late to participate - just be sure to hop over to her page and sign Mr. Linky!

The Prompts:

1.) What is your life's anthem? You know...that song that is ALWAYS in your head. The one you'd go to sing first if someone told you to sing a song right NOW. What is it and what does it mean to you?
(inspired by Tattooed Minivan Mom)

2.) We love telemarketers don't we!?! Describe a memorable experience you had with one.
(inspired by Literal Dan

3.) How much does focusing on weight affect your daily life?
(inspired by Musings Of A Blond Mom)

4.) Describe in what ways you expect too much from your significant other. Do they deserve an apology?
(inspired by Carty Party Of Three)

5.) List ten things that make you HAPPY.
(inspired by our irritation at our own complaining from last weeks "Sick Of" posts.)

6.) Ok I was going to end it with five, but Laina just got out of bed as I was finishing this post and I SWEAR she is sleep walking. It's creepy. I keep asking her what she is doing and she's staring at me...but not directly at me...kind of just a centimeter to the left of my head. I KNEW she was a sleep walker. I just knew it. SO! Share a sleep walking story of your own!!
(inspired by my scary four year old)

This is Calahan.... when he was 5 .... Halloween time... lol... but I knew even before now. See.. when he was 8 months old he started to suffer from Night Terrors. Night Terrors are very different then Nightmares .... when someone uses the word "Night Terrors" I often wonder if they truly know what they are talking about, because a lot of people use the word loosely for nightmares, and don't understand it is something completely different. Trust me, I know! I lived through it, watching my child suffer from them. It started when Calahan was about 8 months old, he would be sound asleep (one would think) and then all of a sudden go from quite to screaming bloody murder as if someone were in there hacking him into tiny pieces - seriously - the heart attacks I got the first several weeks of these, about killed me! He would be screaming so hard that he would get petechiae (the small blood vessels in his face would burst and cause little red spots) ... Night Terrors are related to sleepwalking. It's like being stuck between two worlds and can sometimes get violent. You aren't suppose to wake someone who is having either night terrors or sleepwalking. But they are the scariest things - especially when your tiny baby is having them. Calahan (we actually called him "Joey" then) ... started to grow out of them at the age of 2.... the frequency would go down from a couple times a week, to a couple times a month, to once a month, to once every six weeks... to once every couple months to all of a sudden just stopping.

But at the age of 5, I realized he was starting to sleep walk. We knew it may happen because of the night terrors. He would be more prone to sleep walking.

So at the age of 5, I was alone in the house - well it was Calahan and I ... and I was pregnant with Noah. I heard something odd and I reluctantly went upstairs to investigate. I knew it was upstairs by Cal's room. So I went up the first flight of steps and I was looking around as I was going. Being very quite, sneaking up the steps, careful not to cause them to creak. When I got to the top of the first set (from where I had been) and I peered around the corner up the second set towards Cal's room, I screamed!! He scared the crap out of me. I mean I don't know what I was expecting but I sure as heck wasn't expecting him just standing at the top of the steps starring straight ahead (about 6 feet over my head at nothing) ... I mean it seriously scared the crap out of me. So I walked up the steps after getting my heart to stop jumping out of my chest, and quitely escorted him back into bed, tucking him in.

And then at the age of 6 (or maybe was 7 when it happened) ... we had moved into the last place we lived (before living here) ... and his room was upstairs, mine was in the basement, Noah slept with me down there (baby) ... I was alone - living single Mommy life. I had been working on the computer (I think writing) when I got this sudden urge to get up and lock the doors. We had a back door, at the top of the basement steps, leading onto the back porch and out a storm door to our back yard. And then if you turned from there, walked up 3 steps and into the kitchen, then through the house to the living room, our front door was there. So I kept questioning myself, why? But I just blew it off and since we lived right next to a bar, decided better be safe then sorry. Apparently there was a reason why I felt the doors needed to be locked. So I got up, and locked them. I checked on Cal while I walked through the house (it was about 10 or 11pm) ... and he was asleep. I went back downstairs into my computer room (right off my room) and started working again. So all of a sudden, about a half hour to an hour or so later, I hear this jiggling of the door handle and it freaks me out. So I go and I know it's locked so I set into my room and look out my bedroom door up the stairs and I see Calahan at the back door frantically trying to get the door open. He's turnning the door knob, trying to yank it open, shaking it... he's mummbling "I gotta get out, I gotta get out, I gotta get out." I walked up the stairs, quitely and took his hand from the door knob and said "Calahan, you are okay, you don't need to get out, you need to go back to bed," and we slowly walked him back to bed. Now, you better believe I unplugged every appliance that night, made sure the stove/oven was off and checked the smoke detectors... just incase... before I went back downstairs to my room and I really didn't sleep that night. If I hadn't locked that back door, I would have NEVER known he woke up and had tried to get out the back door. I don't know if it's because I was so involved in what I was doing, or if he was just that quite, but my office was right below his bedroom, I didn't hear him get up, or walk through the house, and that back door was quite opening and closing (if you did it right) and I probably wouldn't have heard it until it was too late.

So there is two of our sleepwalking stories.

I am also going to do the 10 happy things ... but I'll do that in a little while :D