Heart stops

Children can be so blithe about disaster. Last night a reasonably exciting storm rolled through right around bedtime. The boys happily watched lightning from the porch before the blowing rain drove us inside. While we were out there, Henry kept commenting that trees would fall down and land on us. Or maybe on the house.

Upon returning in, he happily predicted, "the lights and power are going to go out, and then lightning is going to strike the house, and the house will have a fire, and then the firemen will come with their trucks!"

We're trying to impress upon the boys that while they love firetrucks and firemen, a fire in the house would be BAD.

Later, I read Henry some fairy tales (violent things, aren't they?) for bedtime. He's obsessed with evil witches dying, princesses dying and becoming revived, almost anything dying or being killed. I turned off his light, and when he flopped down on his bed, eyes tightly shut, he said, "This is a little like being dead!"

ARGH. My heart can't take this.