Hearts and Flowers

I've always been fascinated by dreams, even when I was a kid. So I was eager for Roel to get to an age where he could communicate his. Way before this blog came into being, I wrote down random memories about Roel and stored them on my computer. I'll post the others another time, but here are a few dreams of his I was able to capture:

9/9/2005, age 2 1/2, his first dream (that he could tell me)
Roel, did you have any dreams?
Yes. There were blue and white houses.
Did you go into the house?
No, they are pretend houses. There's a door but it doesn't open.
Oh, are there windows too?
Yes.
Is there anything outside, like trees or a yard?
No, but in the back there are lights.

10/6/2005, age 2 1/2
Roel cried out in his sleep, "I want it!" and when I asked him what it was he told me he wanted a cookie, it was shaped like an animal, and I threw it out in the garbage. (Bad Mommy.)

11/3/2006, age 3 1/2
said excitedly to dad and then, at school, to preschool teacher, "I had a dream about big penises!" Ah yes, a man can dream can't he?

So, it's become habit to share our dreams, and one recent bleary-eyed morning Roel asked me about mine. As I was relaying the bits of my dream that I could remember, other pieces began to come back to me in a steady stream, and I ended up telling him what was a decidedly weird and slightly disturbing dream (not a nightmare by any stretch but something akin to those dreams where your teeth begin to fall out). He was pretty quiet, and it was a day or two later when he told me not to tell him any more weird dreams. I think I freaked him out. Since then, when he goes to sleep he'll say to me, "Sweet dreams Momma when you go to sleep and I love you (with no pauses between words) and then he'll say, "No weird dreams!" And then, just to cover his bases, he'll instruct me, "Momma, if you do have weird dreams, don't tell me. Make up a nice dream." And then he'll lean in closer and sotto voce say, "Tell me you had a dream about hearts and flowers." Now lest anyone think my son a sissy momma's boy, know that he also enjoys such macho pursuits as sword fights, cars, and gruesome enactments of meat-eating dinosaurs catching their prey.