whew! It's over

During Simon's recent cranky stage, he would get up every morning and come into our room mumbling "kick you, bite you." Yikes. Every day for about two weeks. His father had been telling him a story about Mr. Grouchy from a Richard Scarrey book and we'd let him look at the video also. It's a nice little video. Mr. Grouchy is grouchy and won't let the kids play on his pond. One day it looks as though he's not home, so the kids start skating. He sees them and rushes out to send them away, but slides onto the pond and falls through the ice. The kids save him and he turns nice. Simple, right? Well, Simon doesn't get to see many videos and we notice that it takes him weeks to "process" one. In this case, the processing seemed to be backfiring, and he was using the entire thing to explore his dark regions and wander around, muttering like a homeless person. Well, it's over now. For the past week he's gotten up and come into our room. I hear the patter of little feet, feel a hand on my hair, and pick him up, where he snuggles with me for a while. We're trying to teach him now that just because HE'S awake doesn't really make it time for everyone to wake up. (Especially daddy, who is often up until 2 or so working on strange marketing or technical problems.) "It's sleepytime," we say. And he'll snuggle with me. Sometimes he manages to sleep for about 1/2 hour more, and I just lie there in a half-awake state, happy not to have to get out of bed and into our freezing room. It's always hilarious what he manages to bring into bed with him. Yesterday I sniffed at him. He smelled vaguely of ... chocolate? Then I realized that he'd brought his favorite latex gloves with him! (They are another story.) Today he brought two stuffed animals, a book, and his friend's sippy cup, which he's commandeered.