When a six-year-old wakes you up in the wee hours of the morning

You just never know what you're going to hear.

This morning (and yes, I'd love to know what time it was, but no, I can't see the clock from my side of the bed without some major maneuvering, and yes, I've thought about a clock for my side, and no, in nearly 10 years of marriage I've never followed through on that) I heard Anna Marie make her way to my side of the bed.

I fully expected to hear her ask to get in with us, or to tell me she'd had a bad dream.

Nope.

She takes my hand and says, "Mom, I don't want to have that Batman soup for lunch tomorrow. I want to have it for supper tomorrow night."

"Is that all you needed?"

"Yes."

"We'll talk about it in the morning."

Seems I'd bought her a can of Batman Chicken Noodle Soup, and had told her it would be in her lunch today. And, at some point in the night, she woke up, and thought about it, and decided she'd rather have it for dinner tonight.

So she thought that right then and there would be a good time to tell me about her decision.

I really thought I'd dreamed the whole exchange, until I woke up to find her bedroom door all the way open. I usually shut it almost completely, so that as she's trying to sleep (and in the morning when I get up) she isn't awakened by the sounds of the house.

When she got up, I asked her if she had come into my room last night. Yes. Did she ask me something? Yes. Was it about soup? Yes. What was it? That she didn't want the soup for lunch, she wanted it for supper.

I thought for a minute she'd inherited my sleepwalking gene - the one that made my parents buy new knobs for the doors so that they couldn't be opened without unlocking the door first. The one that made me dream that my dad was threatening to leave us and marry Dolly Partan (no, I'm not making this up!) so I went outside. In the winter, barefoot.

Yeah, I realized what I'd done when I stepped into our driveway, which was made of pea gravel at the time. I think I was 7 years old.

No, she wasn't sleepwalking - just demonstrating that once she sets her mind to something, she wants it settled then and there.

No matter what time of night it is.