Being a mommy

is scary sometimes. You always want to protect your children and keep them from harms way. You feed them right, teach them respect, not to talk to strangers, listen to what they are told and even go as far as touching the chest of your infant to make sure they are breathing correctly....it's natures way of saying that we care about the overall well being of our children and it is our natural instinct.

Natural instinct is a strong thing for me. I've always had it in a sense of I know when people that are a part of me are either in some sort of danger or I just need to double check on them. I'm by no means a mind reader or psyic or whatever just very into my instincts.

With that I have always been a very vivid dreamer and don't necessarily read a lot into dreams but some of them totally freak me out. Last night I had the scariest dream. Actually it was a nightmare. I won't go into the details because it makes me cry but the whole thing was that someone came in and murdered Ashlyn and I. I heard something break and hid Alexander in his room and he ended up witnessing the whole thing and my dad found us. I have never had a dream to where I could remember the details like this one. The jammers that Jak was wearing, he noise of something breaking, the phone ringing because I didn't show up to work and no one knowing where I was. Second scariest part of it is that Judy, my mother-in-law, was telling me that she had a same dream last night that someone had murdered the kids. I know that dreams are dreams and not reality but how else do you respond to this besides prayer and tears??!? I am hoping to get some sleep tonight but I am unsure that it will happen.

So, I am a little distrought about the whole dream thing and in a bit of a daze sitting on the porch looking at a magazine this evening after the kids and I get home and after a few minutes I realize that I am in total silence. as a mother I have learned that silence is only good if the kids aren't there or if they are sleeping. So, I get up and walk to the back yard and start to yell for the kids....no answer. I go to the edge of the woods and yell more, no answer. I start to panic....I go to the other side of the house to the edge of the woods where the waterfall is and still no answer. I am in panic mode hard core at this point. I run to the house, get the keys to the truck and start to head across the property when I see the dog running at me. Ok, I think to myself, kids are coming up the hill. No kids, no answer when I yell. Finally after a few seconds (that felt like minutes) Jak comes running up the side of the hill telling me that sissy is stuck and needs help. I take off running through the woods and mud in flip flops to find ashlyn holding on to a tree for dear life and crying for help. She is on the opposite side of the waterfall that is a rock wall and filled with debret from the storms and covered in mud. I cross the rocks very carefully to get to her and calm her down and bring her back to safety at the side of the creek where she belongs. My first reaction was to shake her and ask her why she was even near the creek but the only thing I could do was cry and hug her and thank god that he watched over her. On the way up the hill she explains to me that she let mercades off her lead and she ran off and Ashlyn was trying to catch up with her so she wouldn't get lost. I calmly got her back to the house, out of the wet clothes and in the shower. After shower time we had a long discussion about water, the creek, how Mercades is replaceable and she isn't because God only made 1 Ashlyn and we can never have another one just like her and I think that it scared her so much that we won't have this type of problem again....at least for a LONG time!

I think if I were a cat with 9 lives I would have lost 8 the moment I saw her on the other side of the waterfall. My heart at that moment just dropped to my feet and everything around me went blank. The only thing I could think as I was crossing was "please Lord, don't let her fall, please lord, don't let me fall". Thankgoodness he was there watching here.

So, listen to the little voices that tell you something is wrong, don't read too far into your scary dreams and kiss your loved ones before they lay their head down, and don't forget to say your prayers for God to protect you and thank him for the blessings and watching over you each day.

-Alicia