Awake Dreams

My nephew Ryan turned 5 last week.   I have to be honest - I fell in love with him the first time I met him.  He is funny and cute and smart and loves to cuddle.  He also looks a lot like his uncle!  What's not to love?

Ryan has something he calls "awake dreams".  He lets his imagination roam and will play for long stretches of time all by himself but making all kinds of noises and running all over the place.  I think he inserts himself in certain situations in these dreams.  Sometimes he is in a scene from Star Wars, other times he is battling "bad guys".  I think maybe sometimes there are robots, too?  He is always so amused and always seems to be having the time of his life.

There have been days over the past 5 weeks that I wonder if Gary and I will ever get pregnant again.  And then I wonder how we will get through another pregnancy without being so scared every second of every day.  I get anxious and nervous and Gary reminds me to take it one step at a time.  Let's heal first, physically and emotionally, and then we can deal with what comes our way.

When all that fails, Gary helps me create our own awake dreams.  He will pull me aside and tell me to close my eyes and then detail a scene for me that is truly a dream that I am having while awake.  One time he described us in the grocery store about a year from now with twins - one was in the cart and one was on my hip - and we were in the cereal isle buying Fruit Loops.  (Coincidentally, the cereal was for Gary).  Twins!  One of my oldest friends from middle school has twins and surely she would tell me there is a lot of work involved in that dream!  Another awake dream had us with one baby and going for a walk in her stroller like it was the most normal thing in the world.  That baby was a girl, but I think there have been awake dreams with baby boys as well.  I usually cry during these dreams, but they are tears of hope and dreams and love.

So just as Ryan gets a kick out of his awake dreams, so now do I.   I cannot wait for the day our awake dreams become our reality.