Placement monsters... oh wait, placement AND monsters!

Placement was fantastic.  I did my best to share who I was with everyone I met, and everyone I met was absolutely wonderful - seeing all these rabbis, lay leaders and soon-to-be-rabbis left me feeling excited and revitalized about the state of Reform Judaism in the United States.  It may sound corny, but truly, that was how I felt.  I was one of the lucky ones who didn't have any interviews on Tuesday, but I came to campus anyway with Ari to offer moral support and baby therapy to friends who did.

The other major thing in my life right now aside from placement is monsters.  Xander sees them all the time in his room.  Tonight was a first though - when I told the monsters, on Xander's instructions, that they needed to go away so he could be safe, this time they didn't disappear: "They're still here!!  They didn't go downstairs!!  They're not being good listeners, Mommy."  So I counted down from five to one.  But according to Xander, those pesky monsters still didn't go away!

I was forced, then, to put the monsters on time-out.  Picture me bending down into empty air, "wrestling" with the invisible monsters who were trying to run away, then carrying them to the corner and having major discussions with them about how it's not nice to scare people, and that they were going to stay in the corner for three minutes to think about what they did.

Xander took it all very seriously, and commented after a minute that the monsters were thinking about what they did and that it was time to take them off of time-out.  After confirming this with the monsters and telling them that their time was up, I asked if they wanted a hug.  Xander said yes, they did, so I crouched into the corner and gave myself a deep hug, telling the monsters how proud I was of them for listening and deciding to make a good choice in not scaring Xander anymore.  At this point Xander decided he wanted to hug the monsters too, so he joined me in the corner and wrapped his own arms around himself.

After the hugs were over, we went back into his bedroom.  And lo and behold, Xander proclaimed that the monsters were now nice monsters!  He told me that they had gone downstairs, but that since they were nice, they could stay if they wanted to.

Crisis averted!