Nightmare Before Walking

For some reason Sadie has been waking up at between 12-1 am. I'm not sure if she has bad dreams, or a stomach ache, or if she just wakes up and freaks out, but for whatever reason she has a complete melt down.

Typically, Sadie is Gioconda's baby, but I have been trying to split these little disruptions with her.

They have started crawling, which I will admit has been difficult. Yesterday I freaked out when I found a tooth pick sliver on the floor.

" This is a sword in a little baby throat," I said to no one in particular. My message, of course, be more careful, but since I couldn't exactly pin it on one person, I just sent it out for general consumption.

Its just that there so many more tooth pick slivers in my life than I could have possibly ever imagined.

Even when the girls aren't with me I find myself searching the ground now every where I go looking for little choking hazards. I suppose it keeps me on my toes, all that practicing.

Inevitably, I'll find something on the ground in the living room, something the girls could have gotten into their mouths and I'll spend the next 3-7 hours thinking about how fortunate I am I found the wrapper from the a "fun size" skittles. The business of life has become very basic.

I had no idea everything in my existence was a potential hazard.

"This is nothing," Gioconda says, "wait until they start walking, its a nightmare."

The most troubling part of her statement is the use of the word "nightmare." Over the course of our seven year relationship I would estimate we have been in 25 nightmare situations, when I asked Gioconda she answered "one" and then amended it " three at the most."

When I gave her my number she demanded an example.

The time we went to see the play "Wicked" and came out to a flat tire. The plasma television we had to return to Best Buy twice! The time they delivered our hot tub and forgot to deliver the cover.

I certainly wasn't going to ask her what "three at the most" things she thought were nightmare situations. Our thresholds for "nightmare" are very - very different.

Typically, "nightmare" to Gioconda is "there is no way I could possibly live through this" for me. I suppose I have been preparing for it, the whole walking thing. I have no idea how to begin to brace myself for any of the myriad of "events" which have yet to occur.

"A nightmare?" I asked her again tonight just to test her commitment to it.

"A nightmare," she said, committed.