I hear the secrets that you keep, when you're talking in your sleep...

My family has been known to talk and/or walk in their sleep.

My dad was notorious for "protecting" my mom from falling boxes and such while they were sleeping. I have a few funny memories of his sleepwalking. I remember him being in the hall once at night and saying "Walk this way, please" in a very authoritative voice. I'm still not sure who he was talking to. And one time when my mom had just had my little sister Nicole, I remember my dad had been taking a nap and came in and asked me where my mom was. I told him she was at the hospital with baby Nicole. He looked irritated, like I was making up some crazy story, and asked me again where Mom was. I told him "at the hospital." Exasperated, he walked off. A few minutes later, he had woken up fully and called me into his room. I guess he wanted to make sure I was totally freaked out. I admit that I didn't really want to go in there at first, but then realized he had just been sleepwalking.

My brother had it bad, too. When he was little was when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers were first making their appearance. (Can you believe those things have been around for almost 20 years?!?) He was always fighting bad guys in his sleep. One very vivid memory I have of Walker sleepwalking was when I was about 16 and he was about 4. He had walked from down the hall where his room was into the living room and was yelling at the top of his lungs. He was screaming and kept yelling, "MAMA!!!!" My room was more toward the front of the house and so I heard him immediately. I seriously remember the thought going through my head that someone must be kidnapping him. I don't know exactly what I thought I was going to do, but I jumped out of bed and ran in there ready to kick some butt. Instead, I find little Walker standing in the middle of the dark living room looking around like he is lost, crying, and screaming. I just ran up to him and kind of shook him, yelling, "Walker! Walker!" to get him to snap out of it. By this time, my sister Tori was awake and standing at the entrance to the living room screaming, too! Then my parents were there also making some ruckus wondering what the heck was going on. It was really pretty funny, after the fact.

I will admit that I have had my moments of sleepwalking and talking. I don't do it much anymore, but every once in a while JC will tell me that I talked in my sleep. I recently woke myself up talking in my sleep because I was having a dream that I saw someone I didn't know walking up our staircase. In my dream I tried to yell, "HEY!" at them but nothing would come out. I finally got it to come out and that's when I woke up - because I had yelled it for real.

I don't think the boys have sleptwalk yet, although I have had to redirect middle-of-the-night potty breaks to the correct place. But they both talk in their sleep all the time. Little J can often be heard telling Big J off about something. Big J usually just mumbles incoherent things, with an occasional understandable phrase. Last night was funny, though, because they were having a sleep-talking conversation. I had gone in to check on them and cover them up, like I usually do before I go to bed, and Big J mumbled some long-winded thing to which Little J (who was still asleep) responded, "What?"

I think Little Man may be a sleepwalker, though. The other night he was totally "sleepwalking" if you want to call it that. He had woken up around 11:00 and was totally disoriented. He kept insisting that he had dropped his paci over the side of the crib. When I would hand him it, he would shake his head "no" and get all mad and insist that his paci was on the floor. So finally I let him out of his crib to "show me." He went over into the corner and was crying and looking around on the floor. Then he found this little toy that happened to be laying there, but was acting like he had found his paci. He was SO happy and even tried to put it in his mouth! I acted happy for him and gave him his real paci and laid him back down and he went back to sleep like normal. Crazy kid!

So, basically, if you want to have some conversation-punctuated sleep, come hang out at my house. I'm sure Little J will throw in a few choice words like "dummy" and "stupid head." If you want some good nighttime drama, go hang out at my parents'! ;-)