Sunday, June 23, 2013

A Walk in the Dark

Jo and Elizabeth share a room.  And while it's not as if when they are awake they are the best of friends, but when Elizabeth is not there to sleep with her, Jo can get very stressed.  This stress causes her to sleepwalk even more than  usual.  Actually, it's not that she sleepwalks that often, but she does often get up and cry or scream,  not like night terror scream, but just like her usual loud cry scream, or talk in the middle of the night, and sometimes she gets out of bed and calls to us.  When she does this, it is sometimes hard to tell if she is sleeping or not because she will attempt to have a conversation with us, often about what has happened in the day or what she is looking forward to for the next day.

This week, Elizabeth is gone at camp, so Jo is sleeping alone and she just got up out of bed and tried to come down the stairs.  This is the first time she has done that.  She almost fell, but Jimmy was in the living room and when I heard her, I recognized her sleep voice and told him to run up because she was not actually awake and needed to be lead back to bed.

But that's kind of a scary thing.  We now need to remember to close the gate at the top of the stairs.  We also have a house alarm that we were considering upgrading, and I think that we will move ahead and get it done.  Not only will it protect us from the boogie men outside, but more importantly, perhaps, it will let us know if Jo ever gets as far as going out the door.

Does anyone else have experience with this?  She is almost 6, and it shows no sign of abating.

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