Every so often life throws you a little test to see how you are going to react.  To see if how quickly you will just lose it, or turn into a neurotic mess.  This seems to happen more and more when you are a parent, and almost inevitably occurs when you think you have “nothing” to worry about.

My latest little test on the nerves came Saturday Evening (or Sunday Morning depending on how you want to look at it).  After having some friends over for dinner that evening, I was settled down, trying to catch up on some Tivo’ed shows, as the rest of the house was asleep… Mostly.

As I am sitting there, I here little footsteps wandering down the stairs, and I see LatteGirl appear from the foyer.  “What’s wrong honey?” I ask, half expecting to hear about a bad dream or something that woke her up.  But all I got was a meak, “Nothing,” response, as she walked right by me, towards the dining room.  As she meandered by, she started removing her pajamas.  First the shirt, several steps later the pants, the panties made it almost to the bathroom door.  She proceeded to the bathroom, and I am just sort of watching this unfold.  I feel like I should be doing something, but not quite sure what.

She emerges from the bathroom, and starts through the dining room towards the living room again, but is not reversing the cycle of actually putting her clothes back on.  I finally chime in and ask, “Where are you going?”  She says, “I dunno,” completely expressionless and emotionless.  I lead her towards the sofa, and put her pajamas back on.  As I am doing so, I realize while her eyes are open, and she is at least somewhat responsive, she is basically asleep.

I get her pajamas back on, and get her back to bed, without incident.  But now I am freaked out a bit.  What if I hadn’t been awake and downstairs?  What if she just wandered out of the house?  A million scenarios.  As most parents will atest (I think… It couldn’t be just me… Could it?), when you have something that is even remotely scary happen, you play through seventy bajillion scenarios of how it could have turned out worse, or what else could have happened, and how do you account for each and everyone of those scenarios so that you feel you have dilligently “handled” the situation.

Thanks to nightmares and side effects from asthma medications (including nightmares), LatteGirl has never been a very good sleeper and often, very often gets up in the middle of the night.  But this is the first time she has done anything but simply move from her bedroom to the master bedroom.  So, now I am racking my brain in what the best way is to handle this.  Do I start sleeping in the living room?  Even if I do that, if I am asleep will I hear her?  Do I put back the “gates” that we had when she was a toddler so that she didn’t fall down the stairs?  Could she open them now?  Am I just overreacting? (Probably).

Just life, giving me another little test to see how much it will take to make me lose my mind.