Foreshadowing

When I was in high school, Eng/Lit was one of my favorite classes. I always seemed to get the best English teachers. Well, 2 out the 4 years anyway. Freshman year, I had this loopy old man named Mr. Loss. The poor man's hearing aids never worked, and the kids were relentless in taking advantage of the man. He was strange. I remember his voice most of all. He kind of sounded like Mr. Magoo.

Sophmore year, I got the school pervert for a teacher. You know the type. He was always willing to "help" the girls with their work by standing over their shoulder. I think a lot of girls purposely wore turtlenecks to his class for extra coverage.

Junior year, I had Mrs. Morris. She was absolutely crazy, but I have to give her credit. She knew her stuff. She had a knack for choosing the best books for our assigned reading, and could disect a book like no other. She could see the underlying meanings and symbolism in the story when all we got out of it was the basic plot. Even though she bugged the crap out of me, and had the most heinous breath ever, I really enjoyed her class. It was in that class that I really developed a love for reading. She taught us how to recognize foreshadowing, and it was always fun to see if it would really turn out like I thought it would.

Foreshadowing has been on my mind because I watch certain things my children say and do and wonder to myself whether it is a pre-curser to things to come. In particular what has puzzled me the most lately, Josh's sleeping habits. Josh has always been a fabulous sleeper. Well, I should rephrase that, after he was about 7 months old, and we had finally taught him how to go to sleep on his own, he was a fabulous sleeper. For the first 7 months of his life, he slept curled up on my chest. At first it didn't bother me. In fact I loved it. Having a sweet little newborn all nuzzled in is one of the finest feelings on the planet. That lasted for several months until I could no longer breathe properly with him snuggled up on me. It took a few days of crying at night, but he learned how to put himself to sleep, and ever since has slept like a champ.

When Jake was born, Spencer's mom came to stay with Hannah and Josh for 10 days, and I remember her saying how easy it was to put Josh down to sleep. All he needed was a good night kiss, and he would turn right over and close his eyes. He's always been our best sleeper.

Josh has also always been an early riser. Not too early, but I could usually count on him being awake and ready to greet the day by 6:30am. Lately however, it has been hard for me just to get him out of bed. For the last few weeks, I have felt like I'm trying to get a teenager up and moving. He hasn't been waking up at his normal time, so I usually let him sleep a little longer just to be nice. But I've been going in around 7 or 7:15, sometimes I've even stretched it out to 7:30. He's literally pulling the covers over his head, and saying "Just 5 more minutes". It was funny in the beginning, but now I'm starting to worry that if he's putting up a little bit of a fight now, what in the world is it going to be like a few years down the road?

It makes me wonder what other areas of my life can I look at and see the foreshadowing?

Curious...very curious.