First born test subjects

Scene: Giles residence
Time: 2:00 in the morning
Season wakes up in the middle of the night and notices the front room light is on, and assumes that she or Tom forgot to turn it off before going to bed. She groggily gets up, heads to the front room, surveys the area, then switches the light off.

Not even thirty seconds later, Season is back in bed, readjusting some pillows and getting ready to nod off when she notices that the light in the front room is on again. For a brief moment Season stares in confusion. Then, panicked, Season wakes up Tom—assuming the obvious: an intruder is in the home. (Because all decent intruders are smart enough to turn the lights on not just once, but twice.)

Tom groggily reaches for his glasses and stumbles to the front room with Season following warily behind. They find Clara just chillin' on the couch.

With the case solved and no intruders to run off, Tom heads back to bed. Season coaxes a reluctant Clara back to bed and then goes back to bed herself.

—End Scene—


I have no idea how long Clara had been out in the front room before we discovered her. Strange sleep habits have been surfacing more and more lately, which are especially putting me out because Clara has always been such a superstar sleeper. She's also become an early bird, and she enjoys coming into my bedroom at sinful hours and breathing noisily in my face until I wake up—like she did this morning at 6 a.m. I sent her back to bed—again. (We're an 8 a.m. type of family.) But as a result of it all, she's been begging to go take a nap all morning, which I finally obliged a full hour before she normally has her quiet time. Maybe the poor girl is ill? Because a small child asking for a nap is a sure sign of trouble.

So I'm currently working on rolling with the punches these days because my normally predictable daughter has become so very unpredictable. With any new curveball she throws, I'm constantly having to remind myself to relax and adjust to it. Poor first-born children. Clara has the unlucky privilege of being a test subject for her entire life. Each new stage she's in will always be new territory for me and so I'll never really be able to stay on top of it. I just hope I don't screw her up in the process of figuring out how to do the mom thing in new stages and phases.

But we'll keep plugging.

Update: After sleeping for 2 hours, Clara awoke with rosy cheeks, the chills, and a fever. The poor dear. Doterra's "On Guard" arrived from my mom just yesterday, so it looks like we'll be putting it to use sooner than expected.