Strange....

When it comes to Aidan, we've been blessed 100 times over.  Yes, he throws the normal two year old tantrums, and he doesn't always want to listen to us.  But for the most part, he has been such an easy child.  I know this because I've seen firsthand how out of control a two year old can be.  Even from the time that he was an infant, he was always easy.  No problems breastfeeding him, then switching to formula and later whole milk.  And he's always been a fantastic sleeper.  As an infant, he started sleeping through the night at 2 months old.  He's always slept in his own bed, no problems.  Even now, he still naps once a day, and sleeps in until 8 am.  Occasionally, he's gotten out of bed in the middle of the night and made his way to our bedroom, but nothing like what happened last night.

At 2:30 in the morning, Aidan woke us up by screaming bloody murder.  We literally ran out of bed to see what had happened.  He was standing in the living room, screaming and crying.  Casey picked him up and tried to calm him down so we could put him back in bed. He was not having it, he kept pointing to the little red table that was next to his bed by the window in his room and yelling at us.  I asked him if he fell off the bed and onto the table (because his bed is so high) and he told me no.  Casey put him down and he ran to the kitchen pointing to the top of the refrigerator, still screaming and crying, trying to tell us something.  He backed away from it like he was scared. Casey picked him up to show him there was nothing up there.  When he did, Aidan looked confused.  He quieted down some, but he was still crying.  I felt so bad, I couldn't console him because I didn't know what was wrong.

He brought him into our room, and he stopped crying right away.  Casey put him between the two of us, and Aidan took my hand and put it between his face and shoulder and fell right to sleep.  But all through the night all he did was kick and jerk, cry and moan.  Obviously he was not sleeping well.  He finally woke up around 9 am, like nothing ever happened.  It was the strangest thing.  I know that he's sleep walks sometimes, but we can usually just pick him up and put him right to bed without him ever waking up.  This was not one of those times, he was terrified.  Never in my life have I heard him scream like that.

Just browsing online, I'm thinking it was a night terror.  From what I've read, 80% of kids who have night terrors have a family member who experienced them as well or sleepwalking (my brother used to be really bad, and sleepwalking runs in Casey's family), and it's more common among boys than girls.  I'm wondering if this has been connected to his sleepwalking.  One of the articles I read described that night terrors were different because kids didn't remember them in the morning.  We tried talking to him this morning, and when we first asked him if he had a bad dream he said no. But when we persisted, he said something about a bee and ran off to get a toy.  So I don't know if he even understands what we're asking him, which makes this all the more puzzling.  All I know is that I hope we never have to be woken up like that again.