Anybody seen Ollie lately? It’s been pretty quiet in here…
I guess we never told him not to mess with the stuff under the sink…
Ollie Update
Kids are creepy part 2: the Shadow Man returns
Remember that completely creepy story Ollie told about The Shadow Man who lives behind his bookcase and creeps into his room at night to throw him onto the floor? That’s pretty creepy, right? Probably the only thing creepier than hearing that story would be if Oliver were to receive a letter in the mail from The Shadow Man.
I don’t know, maybe the letter could say something like:
Now, lucky for me I happen to know someone who likes to plan little sneaky surprises for people, and also happens to be studying the post office at school (and also, that someone forgot and accidentally wrote her name in the return address). So I didn’t exactly need to assemble the Scoobies to solve this mystery. Oliver, on the other hand, turned white as a sheet when the letter was read to him.
“I am coming to get you at night time, so watch out”? Who writes that?? WHO WRITES A LETTER TO SOMEONE FROM THEIR NIGHTMARE MONSTER???
Kids, man. Kids.
(P.S. It’s nice that Shadow Man is so formal in his salutations. If I must be dumped out of bed by a creepy shadow monster, I prefer he be a gentleman.)
Good Fairies
You may remember that I blogged about the “mischievous fairies” game a few years ago (wow, has it really been 3 years?). More recently, Ollie and Evie have been keeping the game alive and well, attempting to sneak out at night and smother us whilst we slept perpetrate low-grade mischief.
The mischief has been increasingly mischievous, bordering on downright naughtiness. I think Evelyn, at least, has picked up on the fact that we have not been very pleased to wake up to a huge mess, even if it is accompanied by cute little notes.
Lately, however, there has been a new twist on the old game. Saturday and Sunday morning we were visited by GOOD fairies:
Rather than causing trouble, the good fairies are helpful. They clean up their rooms. They put away all the laundry. They even did the dishes.
It is very sweet, and MUCH nicer than the mischievous fairies. However, Sara and I mostly just quake in our beds wondering what in the world all the racket is, and how long it will take us to recover from all the “help”.
The good fairies are *very* well intentioned. See? They even put away dishes:
What the grumbles?
Ollie picked up a habit somewhere of saying, “What the heck?” We’re not sure where he got that from. I don’t think Sara or I say “What the heck” very much. Maybe from school? Anyway, he didn’t just say, “what the heck,” he was living “what the heck”. He said it, like, once every 30 seconds.
It didn’t bother me too much, but it was driving Sara crazy. It got to the point that every time he said it, I could see Sara cringe. Finally, she told him it was rude, and asked him to say something else instead. After deliberating about it for awhile, he came up with, “What the grumbles?”
What the grumbles?
Now, this is just about the best swear ever. Obviously, it’s best delivered by a just-turned-five year old with a bit of difficulty with his ‘R’s, of course (“What the gwumbles?”), but I find myself taking any opportunity to say it.
A just plain, “What the grumbles?” when something strange happens is the best, but there are other opportunities as well: “What the grumbles was that?” or, “What in the grumbles is going on in here?”
So this is totally a thing now. Feel free to start saying it yourself. Drop it into conversations. Say it at work.
Come on, you know you want to.
What the grumbles?
The Shadow Man
The other night, Ollie was crying before bed.
“What’s the matter, buddy?” I asked him.
“I’m scared to go to sleep.”
“Why?”
“Every night a man comes into my room while I’m sleeping. He picks me up and he dumps me on the floor.”
“A man dumps you on the floor?”
“Yes. The Shadow Man. He’s hard to see in the dark, but his legs are as tall as my room. He lives in a cave behind my bookshelf. When it’s night he goes through a tunnel to the shelf above my bed. He uses his tools and he opens up the star [that hangs on the wall above my head]. That’s how he comes into my room. He picks me up in the air and drops me onto the floor. It hurts and I don’t want him to drop me anymore.”
Kids have such an amazing, vivid imagination. They tell you with utmost sincerity these crazy things that they imagine, and they have so many details, so much texture, that you can’t help but believe them, just a little bit. I’ll tell you, lots of writers can’t manage to paint a picture the way Ollie does about the Shadow Man. The more he talked about the Shadow Man, the more the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Imagine how terrifying that would be, if you truly believed it (and he definitely does).
“Ollie, the Shadow Man’s not real. It’s just a bad dream.”
“It’s not just a bad dream! Sometimes I wake up on the floor!”
Well, it’s hard to argue with that logic, although a nebulous Shadow Man who lives in the wall is a long way to go to explain waking up on the floor. I mean, there’s a decidedly more straightforward explanation…
Regardless, I couldn’t shake him on the idea. If he slept, a 12 foot tall man made out of shadows would creep into his room and toss him from his bed. I finally got him to go to sleep by insisting that all daddies had magic songs they sang to weave an invisible blanket of protection over their children from the time they were babies. When it comes to making up stories, two can play at that game!
“Ollie, what if we turned you around so that your head was at the other end of the bed?”
“Yeah, that might work. The Shadow Man would try to pick me up and just get my feet. So he’d probably get frustrated and go away.”
Makes sense.
He got by the next few nights by sleeping clutching a flashlight (I mean, hey, imagine how deadly a flashlight would be to a dude made out of shadows!), but I got tired of sneaking in and turning it off after he was asleep. So finally I put a nightlight in his room.
Now, so far this is pretty straightforward fare. I mean, lord knows how terrified of the dark I was, and Evie as well, so I didn’t exactly see the next turn coming.
“Ollie, how is the nightlight working? Are you sleeping better now.”
“I don’t like it.”
“No? Are you still not sleeping well? Is it not bright enough?”
“No, I’m not waking up at all…I’m lonely. It’s too bright. The Shadow Man isn’t coming anymore.”
“Wait, you want him to come? You…miss the Shadow Man?”
“It just gets lonely at night without him.”
Parenting is confusing.
Shane Halbach 