The Dormouse has somehow been corrupted by that whole "monsters under my bed" thing lately. I don't know where this came from. In her three years, she's never been afraid of the dark, monsters, or being left alone in her room before. She's watched Monsters, Inc. repeatedly with no adverse effects, and read a plethora of monster related books like Where the Wild Things Are and has never had trouble separating the ideas in fiction from reality. She knows that there are no such thing as monsters and will qualify that idea as "silly" whenever given the chance. But it seems in the last couple of weeks that something has changed. Personally, I'm always ready, willing and able to blame one of the rug rats she goes to preschool with for putting ideas into her head. It's just so much easier to believe that some other person's kid taught her all the bad habits she's ever come up with, you know?

Lately, the KingofHearts has been putting her to bed more often than not because I can't seem to stay awake past 7:00 pm. And the last few nights when he's done this, she's made some reference to needing a light on or worrying about monsters in her room. I don't really want to start the night light thing mostly because if there's a light on in her room, she will simply play around in there after we leave and close the door and find things to do that involve not going to sleep.

KoH, thinking he'd be really clever the other night, got out a glow in the dark stick that had been sitting on the kitchen counter and broke it to start all the orange glowy magic inside. He gave it to her to keep with her in bed and told her it was monster repellent and as long as she had it near her the monsters would stay away.

Clever, you may say? Perhaps, but those things don't last forever - in fact they don't last a whole night. (She later woke me up at three am to report that her glow stick wasn't glowy anymore and she needed another one.) When he reported this after putting her to bed, I immediately had visions of being forced to buy hundreds of the damnable things for the next five years' supply until one day in 2023, when someone came up with a patent for actual monster repellent and she would then sleep voluntarily again. Clever, he may be, but practical, he ain't.

As I was arguing the wisdom of "starting something he couldn't finish", we heard a blood curdling scream coming from the Dormouse's room. When we went in we found the closet door wide open; The Dormouse standing in the middle of the darkened room, sobbing, glow stick in hand; and the cat cowering in the corner.

Here's apparently what happened:

Earlier in the evening, KoH finished bath time and grabbed a pair of clean pajamas out of the closet. While the closet door was open, our all-black cat sneaked into the closet to poke around as cats are wont to do. When KoH was done readying the girl for bed, he closed the closet door, not realizing there was a cat inside. Cat was happy and content to stay there for awhile and said nothing. But after about an hour, when they had turned out the light and we all imagined that The Dormouse had gone to sleep, the cat got bored and began scratching at the closet door to be let out.

This scratching woke The Dormouse who, confident that her new, bright orange, glowy stick would protect her from any and all threats, got out of bed to investigate the sounds in her room and opened the closet, glow stick clutched tightly in her hand. Cat, seeing bright orange, glowy stick, but still wanting out of the closet, ran as quickly as she could for the door and between the legs of the opener of the door. Then, finding the bedroom door closed, cat headed back between the legs she'd just come through, scaring the ever loving daylights out of the holder of the glow stick. The brave investigator screamed back at the monster in the closet, who was now hissing and scratching at her ankles trying to get free and away from the scary, orange, glowy thing.

That's where we came in.

I guess at least that means we don't have to buy a gross of glow sticks for the next several years.