Pride Goeth

In college I took Ancient Greek history as my history class (because I only needed one semester instead of 2, so world history wasn't necessary as it was a full year) and the main things I recall from said class were that 1) our text book was written in 1906 and very much focused on archaeological breakthroughs of the time, 2) our professor might have been the original author of said text, or at least, certainly, a contemporary (many of my classmates thought he might have, in fact, lived through the eras under discussion, so I was the kind one among us), and 3) He loved to say in deep, rolling, professorial tones (think John Houseman in the Paper Chase) "HUbris was the downfall of the Greeks."

All this has been on my mind of late because I had indulged, somewhat prematurely it seems, in a little bout of hubris myself and it has now swirled around and bitten me most firmly in the behind. (Not unlike my cousin's pet goose when I was about 8 years old. I hate geese to this day. I also have a little scar where it tore a chunk out of me. They may not have teeth, but you don't want to be on the wrong end of their beak.) You may recall the whole child will not sleep through the night unless he's in our bed debacle of 2011. (Yes, it really went on nearly a year, having started up in February.) You may also recall how we moved his room and got him a new bed and, lo and behold, he's sleeping through the night! In his own room! Let us all rejoice and sing!

Yeah, not so much.

It started innocently enough with a random wake-up before Tim and I had headed to bed. He was standing at the top of the stairs, wailing and talking about things that made no sense whatsoever. I'm not fully convinced that he's not sleepwalking. I put him back to bed and all was well for that night.

The next night, he woke up to thunder in the middle of the night. Thunder kind of warrants a free pass around here, so ok, fine.

The next night he was up because he was scared. Of what? He wasn't sure. He just knew that he was scared. I tucked him back in, prayed about sixty times, and only had to repeat once more that night.

The night after that, he just appeared, crying and scared (again, of nothing he could name) in our room, climbed into our bed, and went back to sleep.

Lather, rinse, repeat until last night. Last night as I was going to bed he comes out of his room screeching and wailing (honestly, you'd think he was in the process of being maimed, this is the level of horror he appears to be experiencing) about how he doesn't want to be alone because he's scared of the dark outside. I tried to explain that it was outside and he was safe inside and his rejoinder was that it was trying to come in. So I tucked him into our bed and spent the majority of the night wide awake as I tried to avoid falling off the edge myself, only dozing fitfully when I managed to wrest enough space on the mattress to have at least 3 of the 4 appendages actually in bed.

So now we're right back where we started, with the added wonder of: is he sleepwalking? Why is he even able to conjure the idea that the dark outside is going to try and come in and get him? (Honestly, he has a wonderful imagination - but I hate to see it take that turn while he's sleeping.) And really, what do you do? I can't see making abject terror into a discipline issue, that just doesn't seem right. At the same time, king size or no, our bed just ain't big enough for the three of us (say that in a John Wayne drawl for better effect.)

People tell me that he won't still be sleeping in our room when he goes to college. At the rate we're going right now, I'm not sure they're really correct.