While I'm at it...

While I'm on the subject, I'd like to tell (or in some cases, retell) Ian's Creepy Childhood Stories. I never really made the connection until I was writing my last post, but maybe Grandpa Smith was taking advantage of being able to say hello to the grandson he'd never meet. It's possible right? I mean, Ian was in that "in between" stage, alive but not born. So it might have been the perfect timing for Grandpa to say hello.

This got me to thinking about how Ian would freak me out when he was small. When he was a baby, he would wake up at night wanting to be fed. After eating, he wouldn't go back to sleep, he'd stare at the wall and smile and laugh. Not just a single laugh, but an ongoing belly laugh. If I moved position he'd move his position so as to be looking at the same spot he was looking at before I moved. I spent many a night wondering what the hell was he laughing at and should I be calling an exorcist.

Then, when he was about 2, we lived in a very small, old shotgun house. During this time, he had two imaginary friends, Karen and Fence. Not Vince, because we asked, but Fence. He would hang out with Karen and Fence and talk to them all the time. I know, lots of kids have imaginary friends. But the reason I mention them is to differentiate between his imaginary friends and "the other stuff". Let me give you the layout of the house: living room, then french doors opened into J and my bedroom, then a small doorway into kitchen, a small hallway with a bathroom on the side and Ian's bedroom at the end. On several occasions, as we were leaving the house, Ian would yell "Wait!" and run back into my bedroom, lean under the computer desk and say goodbye. When we asked if that was Karen or Fence, he would answer neither, but he never would tell us who it was. Also, after we had been living there a few months (we lived there exactly one year), if we were in the living room or my bedroom, and he wanted a toy, he would not go through the kitchen alone to get to his bedroom. He didn't like "the man" in there. I have to be honest, that was part of the reason we started looking for somewhere else to live. It just creeped me out that there might be a questionable spirit living in our house. And that Ian could see him.

After we moved the weird stuff pretty much stopped. BB never had those issues. No imaginary friends, no weird nocturnal laughing, nothing. And I'm good with that.