Cries In The Night

Adrienne sometimes cries in the middle of the night. It's not uncommon for her to just suddenly sob/wail/scream bloody murder for a couple of minutes, and then just as suddenly, go back to sleep. It happens about 2-3 times per week and I always assume that it is because of a bad dream.
Lately she has become quite choosy about which pajamas to wear. She absolutely refuses the cute fleece zebra-striped pair (even when Jillian is wearing hers), and shouts, "No yike ze-bas"! Tonight, she dug in her drawer and was excited about those striped Christmas pajamas with the little elf hat. Matt obliged her, and also let her wear the hat because she wanted to. The hat remained on through story time, and she still wanted it on when he put her in bed. No big deal, let her wear the elf hat, right? So we did. Fast forward to 12:15 a.m. I hear the screaming start. I laid there for a couple of minutes, waiting for it to stop. It started carrying on longer than usual, and was a bit more intense than usual, so I decided to make the trek upstairs to make sure she was OK. I walked in her room and leaned over her bed in the dark to look at her. She immediately shot her hand up at me, shoved the little elf hat in my face and said, "I want da hat on, Mama". I replaced the hat on her head, to which I heard, "Thank you, Mama", and she was silent. Just like that. I can think of a lot of situations that I imagined would cause my children to cry out for me in the night, but never once considered I'd need to replace an elf hat. Motherhood is full of surprises like that.