Nightmares

Eli is on the home stretch to his 8th birthday. And he can tip the scales at 50 pounds if he has his pockets full of treasures, and a full meal in his belly. He is not large. Tall, but very thin. It's not that he doesn't eat. I think that he often outeats me if the meal consists of noodles or pancakes. Anyway- this morning he came crawling into my bed at 6:30am. He was shaking and teary. In a very quiet, shaky voice he said, "Mom, I just had the WORST nightmare." Oh great, I thought, the decision to let him watch the first Harry Potter movie was going to come back to haunt me in the form of sharing my bed with Eli for nights to come as he worked through his fears of Voldemort. Then, "sniff Dad was down in the basement making origami butterflies..." Where was this going? There was a basement involved, so that's scary, but his dad was down there...making butterflies...
"So I went down and helped him...shudder, sniff... and when I came back up, I had MISSED BREAKFAST!!" At that point he broke down into very sleepy shuddering and sniffling and eventually dozed back off. I lay next to him, looking at his face, still tense even in sleep. Eventually he slept more peacefully.