A nighttime adventure of a different variety

I realize that "sleep" has been a more frequent subject of this blog, and I think that must be only natural for a new Mom. I will add another to the list. My Dad has been visiting this week, so Joshua has been sleeping in our room. He has done this before, but it was when he was younger and much less aware. I wasn't sure how this week would be; I expected him to wake up more often than usual in the night. Each night, David and I get completely ready for bed outside the room and then make our carefully planned entry. We ease into the bed as slowly and silently as is physically possible, and then we pretty much stay as still as we can until the morning. It has worked pretty well. Joshua has woken up a couple of times, but he goes back to sleep within minutes. I think he only cried the first night.

That is the necessary background information. Last night, we went to bed as usual. It was a little bit warmer than it has been, so I kicked off the blankets. I woke up with a pain on my ankle. I thought that something must have bitten me, but I didn't know how I should go about trying to find it without waking Joshua. At times, he seems a bit more sensitive to light than he does to noise. So I used my little watch light to look over the sheets. I didn't find anything, so I got back under the covers for some more protection. My ankle kept burning, so I finally got up to look at it in the light. There wasn't much to see. I went back to bed, but I couldn't go back to sleep. About an hour later, I was still awake when David started tossing and turning. I nudged him and whispered, "You are making a lot of noise!" (He had earplugs so I figured he didn't realize it.) He said something had bitten him, and it was hurting really badly. He got up to check it out as well. Now what we are thinking is that something has hurt each of us badly enough to wake us up, and it is somewhere in the room with Joshua.

We decided that we would have to move Joshua to check things out. I picked him up and took him into the dark living room while David combed the room. I was amazed that he didn't even budge as I held him... he even kept his thumb in his mouth. How incredibly lucky! What wasn't so lucky was that his pajamas were all wet. I hated to disturb him, but I had to change him! So what started as a bite on my ankle turned into our whole family awake at 3 in the morning... turning the room upside down, changing clothes, etc. We think it must have been a scorpion, and we never found it. I keep feeling things crawling on me now! Thankfully, Joshua cried while I change him, but he went right back to sleep at the end of the ordeal.