While you were sleeping

Julia had a rather active night last night, so I was squeezing every last minute of sleep out of the morning that I could. That meant I was still snuggled into bed when Rudy emerged from his bedroom. He came creeping into mine, whispered "Wake up" in an urgent sort of voice, and dashed down the hall. Kind of a disorienting way of waking up, since I was only 75% sure I'd actually heard a voice, and maybe 50% sure it was Rudy's.

"Rudy?" I groggily called out. He came sauntering into the room and said, quite mysteriously, "You slept so long, something very strange happened!"
"Oh, yeah, what was that?" I said, with a bit of trepidation in my heart.
"I turned into a viking...and my room turned into the viking world all around me!" Rudy said with theatrical drama to his voice.
"Oh." (sigh of relief)
"Did it come up to your room too?" He asked.
"Oh yeah, I think it must have. I'm feeling quite like a viking--do I look like one?"
"Yeah!" says Rudy, and our day of imaginary play begins.



***All this viking play that has been coloring almost every moment of our days for weeks now stems from the movie, "How to Train Your Dragon" that we bought for Rudy at the beginning of January. He watches it about once a week, though he asks to watch it almost every day, several times a day. Rudy always plays Hiccup or Toothless. Jason plays Gobber, 'cause he refuses to even pretend to be the mean Dad that Hiccup had. I'm usually Astrid, Tough Nut, or "The Viking Mama Who's Afraid of Dragons" so Rudy can save me every 30 seconds. Rudy has agreed that Sunflower can be Julia's viking name, instead of her real name. (He's been pushing for us to name Julia Sunflower since before she was ever born. Glad we could accommodate his wishes at last.) Our living room furniture moonlights as dragons-the maroon chair is Toothless, the green rocker is a Grunkle, and the love seat is the two headed Zippleback dragon. Julia's bouncer is a dragon too-Rudy says its a little one that licks you to eat you. Nice. ;)