Stress dreams

Growing up, my nightmares/stress dreams seemed to revolve around school.  They usual involved my showing up at school and not being able to remember my locker combination, forgetting what class was next on my schedule, or having to take a test in a class where I hadn't attended all year.  Of course, there was the random show up to school naked dream, but really it was mostly not remembering something I should have remembered.

When I finished college and moved on to the working world, I would still occasionally have the school stress dream.  However, I also started having spy dreams.  I'm pretty sure this has something to do with watching to much "Alias", but I seemed to do a lot of running from people that were trying to shoot or kill me.  I was a pretty good spy, though, so I usually was fairly indestructible in a Sydney Bristow/Jack Bauer fashion.

When I left my overtime-working accounting job, I went to work substituting at the elementary schools, along with other things.  My stress dreams during this time period usually involved having to substitute for a sixth grade class of hellions, or the dreams had something to do with showing up at my old accounting job to work part-time or just for tax season.  I always knew, waking up from one of these dreams, that I must be stressed about something.

Enter parenthood.  Rarely do I have the locker/school dreams any more.  It's been a long time since I've had a spy dream. I kind of miss those. I don't usually dream about my old jobs anymore, either.  My dreams not revolve around my family.  But not always in a happy way.  They usually have to do with children waking up at 5 am and trashing the house; or extended family members descending upon my house at 6 am looking for food.  Or having a child get lost or drowning in the bathtub.  Apparently these are the things I now stress about subconsciously.

How about you? What are your stress dreams? Do they in any way reflect your true life and stresses?

Every morning is Christmas

We have a tradition in our family, that on Christmas morning all the children come into our room when they wake up.  They wait there until everyone is awake, and then we all go downstairs together to the front room to see what Santa has brought. Apparently this tradition has stuck because our children, when they wake up in the morning, on any day, come immediately into our room and don't seem to want to go downstairs until everyone is awake and ready to go down for breakfast.

We'll have 5 children rolling around on our bed or our floor, asking us over and over again "Can we go down and have breakfast now?" It doesn't matter how often we tell them "You can go downstairs anytime you want.  You don't have to wait for us." They seem to treat it like Christmas, where they can't go downstairs until everyone is ready and Mom and Dad say it's okay.

I have no doubt this is one of those things that when they are older I will miss.  Knowing that my children want to see me first thing when they wake up in the morning and that they want to be together.  It would be nice if they would occasionally wake up on a morning when I finally get to sleep in, and decide "I think I will go downstairs and play quietly by myself rather than waking Mom and Dad up and staying in their room until everyone is here." I have my doubts about whether this will ever happen, and I guess I'll miss it when it finally does.