Halloween Witch, Dreamcatchers and more
The Halloween Witch came and went this year. Cole and Ally both did a great job of sharing their candy with the witch, who in turn rewarded them with some really fun books. All is well, except for Jen and I who are eating a little too much candy than is good for us. 
I didn’t get to go trick or treating with the kids because I was presenting at ZendCon 2006 (which went very well) but I did get back in time to get some nice pictures of our pumpkins all lit up.. The kids went trick or treating with Luke, Peter and Alice and we got a few good pictures of them also. Jen and I went to a fun parade at Cole’s school and a great little Halloween party at Ally’s (some of those photos were taken by Ally’s teachers, Stephanie and Debbie). The kids really love getting dressed up and marching around in their costumes.
I was talking to my coworkers on Friday about the Halloween Witch and my coworkers were very amused that we would perpetuate this hoax on our children. They were even more floored when I told them about the Dreamcatcher. I had to tell them the whole story.
Cole used to have really bad nightmares. He would be up in the middle of the night 2-3 times a week with dreams about bug-eyed monsters, etc and it was very hard to get him to go to sleep. So back in May when I was down in Santa Fe for a a conference at Los Alamos I bought him a Native American dreamcatcher. I brought it home and explained the whole mythology to him (except, I left out the part that it’s not real). I explained that the dreamcatcher is very powerful and it would keep all the bad dreams out and only let in the good ones. Cole, of course, was full of a million questions. How does it keep the bad dreams out? What if a bad dream sneaks in when the dreamcatcher isn’t looking? Can a bad dream trick the dreamcatcher? How does it tell good dreams from bad dreams? I gave him all the right answers and lo, he went to having about one bad dream a month. Huge difference.
So anyway the other night around 5:45 AM (I’ve asleep for about 2.5 hours at this point) Jen wakes me up. Cole has been having a rough night and he’s tired her out so she’s giving me a shot at calming him down. My conversation with him goes like this:
- Me: “What’s the matter?”
- Cole: “I’m having a bad dream”
- Me: “Hmm. But you have a dreamcatcher!”
- Cole: (wails) “It’s not working!!”
- Me: “The dreamcatcher never fails!”
- Cole: “But I’m having a bad dream!!”
- Me: (thinks) “If you were having a bad dream, the dreamcatcher would have caught it. So you must have been having a good dream, you just didn’t wait long enough for the good part!”
- Cole: (thinks) “but… Ok!”
Then he goes back to bed and sleeps the rest of the night. Here’s hoping that the sleep he gets will offset the amount of therapy he’s going to need when he finds out the truth.
Ally’s got her own special fairy coming along soon. We’re getting to the point where she’s going to have to give up her pacifier. We know it, she knows it. Instead of meeting this battle head on, we decided to tell her about the special Paccy Fairy. This fairy takes pacifiers from kids who have outgrown them, and gives them to kids who really need them. Ally is going to decorate a special box, put her pacifiers in it, address it and mail it off to the Paccy Fairy, who in turn might mail her back a special treat. She’s excited about this in principle, but I don’t think she’s quite ready to move on it. More on that later.
Finally, I’ve uploaded some photos from the end of last April in the Harkins album. I can’t believe the kids were so small! This one is my favorite of this latest bunch. I’ll keep adding photos slowly to this album until I’m caught back up again.
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