I have been with my wife (dating included) for about 13 years, and I thought I had experienced everything there is to experience with someone over that length of time. We have experienced embarrassing moments, loss, success, growth, love, children… basically everything but having grandkids (that will probably not happen for another 25-30 years), and what happened last night.
We have a long day today, so sleep was crucial for me. Put the kids down, after having an awesome impromptu dance party for about 45 minutes. They crashed hard, which is tough to get them to do. For some reason, kids don’t understand how incredibly awesome sleeping is; they think being awake is better. Wrong.
Based on how hard I was sleeping, I had been in a deep sleep for a couple of hours. Not something that happens every night because we wake up here and there because Cason had a nightmare, or Chloe heard some loud car drive by, or because they think its morning and need us to reassure them that its still night time. So I am deep in sleep mode when I am awakened by my alarm. Not my “go to work” alarm, that would be pleasing to hear compared to this. It was our burglar alarm. Good news: it did its job; it woke me up right away. Bad news: I was super disoriented. I am trying to gather my thoughts as best as I can, kids start screaming and crying within 5 seconds. A bunch of “mama!” “papa!” and “I’m scared” are coming from their room. I dart my eyes over to the door in our bedroom that leads to the backyard, and I see a silhouette standing at the door… frozen. Maybe they were in shock from the loud noise? Maybe there are others that ran in really quick to grab and go? I have no idea, all I know is that I keep thinking, “What is happening.” So I yell, over the alarm, “what the hell are you doing?” This is all happening in a matter of about 20-30 seconds, but feels like forever. The shadow then says, “shhhhhhhhh! I’m sleep walking!” I look next to me, and Kinsey is not in bed, so I ask the shadow, “Kinsey?” The shadow says, “I’m sleep walking.” She then proceeds to walk back to the bed, alarm still going off, Kids are still screaming, she gets into bed, and then pulls the covers over her head. I get up, turn the alarm off, go calm the kids down, and then head back in the bedroom where Kinsey is now sitting up.
I remember that you are not supposed to wake up a sleepwalker… I think. It might have been from a TV show. I thought about it, but I didn’t want to do some irreparable damage, so I let sleeping Kinsey do her thing and I lay back down. About a minute later, I feel her get up out of bed, so I start watching her. She goes back to the door and opens it again. Alarm goes off. My night in a nutshell.