It's Rob's fault

At least three times a week, Jannika wakes up in a panic, sweaty and sobbing from night terrors. These episodes are unlike nightmares in that she is (and stays) completely asleep through any attempts to comfort her, which is pretty frustrating unless you can look past her flailing limbs and start appreciating what she's murmuring.

I had to double-check my "I love all holidays...and my birthday...and new school supplies...like a nerdy 8-year-old would (so a lot)" tendencies when Jannika screamed out during a night terror on Valentine's Day evening, "I don't WANT glitter on my valentine!!" Apparently our valentine-making session wasn't as fun for her as it was for me...cough.

And I also start wondering what level of stress a stinker of a brother adds to the life of an anal-retentive "it's super fun to put one plastic animal in the direct center of each tile in the kitchen and work on this for over an hour" girl when she moans in her sleep, "He CAN'T touch my ponies! He can have some garbage instead."

Then I read that night terrors are usually genetic...and it all started making sense. It was Rob's faulty genes.

The same genes that caused him to sit upright in bed one night, grab my arm (startling me half to death), and yell, "Get that banana away from me! I knew it was fuzzy from the start!"

Or the genes that woke me up when I could feel him sit bolt upright suddenly and lean over to peer at the wall for a long moment. Then, just as I was falling back asleep, I felt a tapping on my shoulder and rolled over to find that he was wordlessly attempting to hand me - for no apparent reason - the large framed print that hung next to his side of the bed.

Or the genes that incited him to sit upright and start violently pillow-fighting a long-limbed stuffed monkey that was hanging from the top corner of the blinds in our first apartment, causing the entire 4-foot-wide shade to collapse into a crumpled heap on the ground (back when "here's a token of my undying love" plush animals fell into an actual "home decor" category).

So I contribute the anal-retentive genes and Rob throws in the night terror raging attacks against hanging stuffed monkey genes...what a winning combo. Sorry kiddos.