The 'Scare Factor' is enormous, I know. How can it not be when you have so many monsters in one room. Daddy is the "One-eyed Tan Monster" (yes, that is a toilet lid cover he's sporting as a head decoration). Mommy is "Loopy the Confused Blue Monster". I only had like 10 minutes to come up with something and this was the best I could do. Gavin is "Ike" - referencing the scary hurricane monster looming in the Gulf of Mexico that very night. Bennett is "The Death Zombie". I have no clue how he came up with such a descriptive name - it is far out of the realm of toys/books he comes in contact with. But he has quite a far reaching imagination, as you can tell by his scary monster mask...so that is par for the course. And Chloe, is your neighborhood variety "Dark Green and Pink" monster, as she likes to refer to herself. As the festivities die down for the evening and everyone is getting ready for bed, Chuck and I recollect over another fun, family evening. Only then does the irony of it all hit us. What were we thinking? Dressing up all scary, letting the kids watch a movie about monsters jumping out of closets at night and then sending them all up to bed like everything is perfectly normal? Hello! They are all probably scared out of their minds right now. Way to go! A minor oversight on our part. We did go up stairs to do last minute damage control...you know, reminding the kids that that was all pretend, that monsters aren't real and that just supposing if they were - they would be scared of kids. We armed them with empowerment. We told them that if they felt scared at all at night to just growl at their closet door and that would keep them away - the non-real monsters, that is.
Not only were we idiots for not seeing this "Mommy, I'm scared" routine as the logical end to the evening...but we made matters worse by talking in circles at bedtime. I think we've totally confused them - that little speech should have made them tired enough to not even be able to think about monsters, pretend, movie, or otherwise.
