What my kids' dreams really mean!

Jacob came running in our room about 4:30am this morning from a bad dream. I tucked him back to bed and he asked me to pray with him. After praying with him and falling back asleep myself, I didn't really think about his dream again. Then the boys woke up around 7:00ish and we were all sitting in the living room before Steve left for work. Jacob was really quiet and not quite himself. Then I remembered his bad dream and asked if it was still bothering him. He proceeded to tell us the details of his dream...

Long story short, he dreamed that he, Steve, and a friend were on our back deck when Steve said there was a wolf at the top of the street. Turns out it was a lion and it came up on the deck. The 3 guys were safely inside. Well, Zachary, decided he also had a bad dream and picked up where Jacob's dream left off :) In his "dream" the lion came inside the house and came into our basement and started eating up all the toys. Steve looked at me, looked at the boys and said "I wonder if the lion symbolized your mommy."

Just yesterday I went on a toy ridding spree in the basement! I boxed up 3 big boxes of toys to sell and put away about 1/2 the toys in the basement to keep out of sight for awhile. I've found that when the kids see the toys day in, day out, they ignore them. When I pull something out they haven't seen for awhile, it is their long lost favorite! So maybe I was the lion in the dreams. Or at least that is how I appear to my kids. But yesterday I finally had enough with our overabundance of toys.

When we were renting the apartment in Charlottesville, we had no playroom, just a toy closet of a few items from home. The kids used their imagination and played so well during that time. Now I find myself saying, go play with your toys, find something to do, etc. When they have less, they play better!

In the apartment, Zachary had 1 train and that was it. But he was fascinated by trains. He became obsessed with Thomas the train. It was so cute. Then came his birthday and Christmas and now he has everything Thomas. He owns almost all the trains, wooden, motorized, die cast, etc. He has a train table and several take along Thomas tracks now. Now that he has all of that, he lost his interest. It is so sad to see b/c it was the first thing that Zachary really loved. He would get so excited about Thomas anything. Now he couldn't care less about trains or anything Thomas. That was such a clear example to me of why our kids shouldn't have everything they want. When he had one train, it was his prized possession. It went everywhere with him...even to bed! Now, they have all been forgotten. When he wanted and didn't have, he loved trains.

So yesterday, we put away or got rid of over 1/2 of the kids stuff. It was quite ridiculous how much they had accumulated. We actually had a bucket that had 4 laptop computers and 1 leapster in it! They never play with any of it except the leapster. And that I only allow them to play 20 min a day each. They had 2 buckets of puzzles, 2 buckets of building toys, all of it ignored for the most part. They spend their time mostly either pretend playing together, setting up 1.00 store army guys, playing with happy meals Star Wars figures, drawing and reading, or wrestling and running. They play more with the couch cushions then any of their toys. They build forts with them, they "dig" in them, they use them to play obstacle course games.

So after my toy raid, they actually were able to focus and play yesterday and today. The playroom looks so much better with less stuff in it. They have more room to wrestle and "fight" (never knew boys liked that so much!). And they have fewer things to distract them. So they can choose a toy and sit and focus a little better now.

Sadly, all of the Thomas stuff went into hiding yesterday. But I'm hoping in a couple of months when I rotate out the toys, Zachary will once again have his love for trains.