The Curious Incident of the Unicorn in the Night-Time

Max in dreamland... he crashed on the couch after a day out on the town with Daddy

It's funny how Paul and I have programmed ourselves to hear what we are supposed to hear at night. Basically, we have assigned ourselves each to one child- I get Louie and Paul gets Max. Lucian can be screaming bloody murder and Paul won't even roll over, but if Max so much as whines, Paul jumps out of bed to his side! Max hasn't woken up at night for months, so I wasn't sure if Paul's reflexes were still in shape. But lo and behold!

It was 2:00am on Friday, and I awoke to the sound of Lucian wailing (not an uncommon night-time occurrence), and I noticed that Paul was already up! It took me a second to get oriented, then I realized that Max was crying as well (apparently, my programming is the same as Paul's, in reverse!) I got up to check on the situation and found Louie sitting in his crib crying while Paul tried to comfort Max. I laid down my little boy with his blankie, and he was out in no time. But before I went back to bed, I heard Paul ask a distraught Max if he wanted a drink of water.

Out of the blue, Max responded, "Unicorrrrrrnnn!"

What the...??

"I want my UNICORN!!!" he sobbed. (FYI, Max does not own a unicorn of any kind.) Finally Paul got him settled down by telling him that he could close his eyes and dream about unicorns again if he wanted to. He snuggled in and drifted off to dreamland... apparently to find his... unicorn? Whatev, dude.

Silence overtook the house again, and Paul and I chuckled ourselves to sleep. The next morning, we told Max what had happened. He had absolutely no recollection but thought the whole story was pretty funny! Now in those rare moments that he is not wearing a pirate hat, he has been running around with his finger pointing out from his forehead and neighing like a horse (Unicorns neigh right? That's what I told him). Could we be moving in the direction of castles, knights, unicorns and dragons? Only time will tell...