My side of the family does a whole lot of strange things, but to my knowledge, sleepwalking has never been among them.

My uncle kept goats instead of a lawnmower for decades. They munched enough to keep the kudzu under control, but damn, those things were mean.

I grew up thinking it was normal to call the remote control a magic stick (no, I am not making this up). It made for some awkward moments at friends’ houses, and I still can’t listen to that 50 Cent song without thinking of my family passing the remote around during TGIF programming. And I’m pretty sure that’s NOT what 50 has in mind.

I fall down a lot. Not because of any condition, just because I’m clumsy. At any given moment I’m sure to have bruises blooming like tattoos all over my legs and arms from falling up the stairs, down the stairs, off a stationary chair whilst sober, or tripping over a shadow that looked like the dog. I wish I were making this up. When we’re with friends and have had a drink or two, I’ll usually stumble, because that’s what I do, and it’s up to Mark to convince them. “No, really, she’s not blitzed. She’s always like that, I promise. She sprained her wrist last month when a bird was nesting in the wreath on the front door and I opened it and it flew out. She just kind of shot backwards, hit a wall, and fell down. No, really!”

My mother once took the cat to the vet, sure that he’d broken his paw, only to find that he’d stepped in chewing gum.

Oh, and yes, I have driven away from a gas pump with the pump still attached to my car.

Anyway.

NONE of those things are as bizarre as sleepwalking. A lovely little trait which my daughter appears to have inherited from my husband. It’s not uncommon on his side of the family, and as recently as six months ago, Mark found himself sleepwalking around our house.

So to their family, this is a fairly normal thing.

To me, it’s kind of like keeping vampire bats as pets.

But I digress.

We went on a family vacation to the beach a few weeks ago and had a lovely time. The house we rent has two floors, and our little family stays on the bottom floor. The floor plain is arranged so that to go upstairs you have to walk outside, up a flight of stairs, and in the front door. I believe they used to call these in-law apartments or something similar.

This is a fairly quiet beach, and our routine has been to put the kids to bed, set up a baby monitor, and go back upstairs. If they need us, we hear them and go down. (Of course, when they were younger, one of us stayed down there the whole time, but for the past two years we’ve felt comfortable with the monitor arrangement.)

And I was fine with it this year, until we were watching a movie, and my sister-in-law said, “Oh, my gosh, Angie, Anne is over there!”

Sure enough, my daughter was walking, clad only in a nightgown, through the foyer and down the hall to the kitchen. Mark and I ran to her and he scooped her up. Her eyes were open, but she was completely asleep. He took her back to bed, and I proceeded to freak out.

The scene inside my head was something like this:

She could have walked out into the street! She could have walked across it to the beach and into the ocean and drowned! She could have gotten lost. She wouldn’t have known to tell anyone where she was staying. Oh, sweet Jesus, she could have gone out the back door and down to the dock and fallen off into the canal and there was an alligator in there yesterday morning … she could have walked up the wrong stairs into the wrong house and what if she’d run into a pedophile? Or a gang of teens drunk driving a golf cart and texting? Those things can go so fast and the headlights are awful and ohmigod what is that crushing weight on my chest? How did we not hear her making any noise?

The rest of the family assured me that she was fine, that none of that did happen, and that if anyone had found her, they would have had the police right on it and figured it out. All I could think was, where did I put my Xanax and I wonder if you can tattoo a name and emergency contact number on a five year old?

I didn’t sleep at all that night, and of course ended up with a horrible migraine the next day. All I could think about were the what ifs.

The next night I was fully prepared to stay downstairs, but Mark convinced me that if we locked and deadbolted the doors, they would be fine. And that if she woke up and tried to open the door, we would at least hear the noise. We tested it out and decided it would be sufficiently noisy if she did try to unlock the door, but I had a hard time relaxing upstairs.

There were no incidents the rest of the trip, but Anne has started to sleepwalk almost every night, into our room around 10:30 or 11. Glazed, she doesn’t even say anything, she just opens the door and stands there.

I took the kids to the pediatrician today (the twins have twin sinus infections!), and made sure to talk with her about the sleepwalking. She said it happens when kids are overtired (no kidding! She’s out of bed all the time!), and to try to get her back on a regular sleep schedule, to try melatonin. And that kindergarten will help.

In the meantime, we’re supposed to be sure to set the alarm on the house every night (which we do anyway), lock all the doors (again, we already do), and be sure to let anybody she might be staying with know that she sleepwalks and to do the same. Which I’m sure my sister would have appreciated before she found her on her stair landing while she was keeping them last month. (Sorry, hon!)

Really, until she walked out of her bedroom, out the front door, up a flight of stairs, and into the main beach house, it didn’t occur to me that what she was doing was sleepwalking. I thought maybe nightmares or night terrors.

But no, she’s sleepwalking.

 So tell me, please, if you have kids who sleepwalk, how do you keep them safe? What do you do at home, and what do you do when you travel?