The pea and other middle of the night ramblings

I remember an old fairly tail about a princess who could feel a pea under 100 mattresses or something. I don't remember the details or the moral, but I often think of it. Max has been wanting to play and "sleep" on mommy's bed, which is fine, but he tracks his food and dirt and such with him. I keep feeling all these "peas" in my sheets. No, not literal peas, just grains of sand that rub, sticky grape juice, etc. I straighten, I hand brush, I look and it looks fine and I climb in and find that small sand grain and lob it off the the floor. Oh, what I put up with, as a result of this son of mine. Last night we read stories on my bed for a good 15 minutes. I think that is a record for him. He is liking and "read" books on his own more, requesting specific books, starting to show some favorites. Big surprise, his current favorite is The Little Engine That Could. I think I read it 5 times last night. Often, he will still be playing around with his trains or some toy as I read with only occasionally coming to look at the pages, but I can tell he really is paying attention. The last few nights, he really hasn't wanted singing..."no sing mamma, read book"...so, as requested, we've read books instead. It is great and makes me happy.

Why am I up in the middle of the night? My alarm, which wasn't turned on, went off at 2:20 am. I reset the alarm time to 10:20 am just in case it decides to have a mind of its own again to avoid such situation again. As I almost never ever use an alarm to wake unless I have to travel out of town on an early flight which hasn't happened (Hallelujah) in years. The only thing I can think is resetting the clock for the time change caused it to get confused or something. Don't know, but here I am in the middle of the night wide awake.

I was having this weird and disturbing dream when abruptly woken. I was a live out nanny for a family of young twins whose father was deployed on tour with the military. I was only going to be working for this family for another 6 months and was helping the mom/wife interview live in nanny's. She found someone early and her live in an pick up extra hours and after this happened I found out she was a suspected child sex offender. I got concrete evidence that I presented to the mom and was fired. Very odd really, but interesting since I was awake to analyze it. In the church bulletin, they were talking about the training program that anyone working with children in the church needed to go through with the upcoming dates/times it was offered. After church, we went over to my friend's house. Her husband was flying out of town last night for business. She used to be a nanny and we talked about how she was going north for Thanksgiving weekend to visit and spend the holiday. My garbled mind must have been piecing all of the isolated pieces of information of the day making it into a weird story or something. Still it was quite detailed and disturbing.

I've been doing a bit of research here and there on fine motor skills and such. According to Birth to Age 5 book (not it's official title, but the lights off and it is out of arms reach and I don't feel like getting out of bed or turning on the light) Max has hit all targets for his age. According to a checklist on I saw elsewhere Max has only achieved 1 or 2 of 4 or 5. And, I've spent the last 15 minutes trying to find it again, but can't. Drat. It had things like 1) can put on shoes and socks 2) can take off shoes, socks, and shorts 3) Copy/draw a vertical line and 3 or 4 other things that Max couldn't do. He can take off shoes, socks, and PJ bottoms, his sleep blanket, his diaper. He can put on momma's shoes and boots, but not tennis shoes or other. It's funny cause in my search of this list, I came across 5 others of which Max could do almost all of the times.

Of the 80 or so items that could be a sign he has SPD, only a few really apply. He doesn't like to have his hair brushed. He doesn't like to have his teeth brushed, although he is 500 times better after going to the dentist a few months ago, he still prefers to "do it myself, momma". He has trouble sleeping if he isn't at home, in a familiar comfortable environment. He used to need white noise to sleep as a baby (but, out grew that years ago). He appears uncoordinated and stumbles quite a bit.

http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/SPD-symptom-checklist-for-infants-and-toddlers.html

Anyway, you've now been privy to what's been on my mind in the middle of this night where I've been wide awake for too long. I'm going to at least rest quietly and try to fall back asleep before the day officially starts.