Restless nights

Thing 2 is back on a not sleeping through the night phase.  This comes and goes, and I am really tired of it - pun intended.
For the past week or so she has been waking me up twice a night, usually between 3:00 am and 5:00 am. One time she'll call because she has kicked off her covers and is completely unable to cover herself up again.  I grumble and grouch at her, and cover her up, and stumble back to bed.  I usually have enough time to get back to sleep and maybe sleep for an hour before she wakes me up again.
The other call is usually because she had a nightmare.  Sometimes she's woken up screaming, and she gets less trouble from me about it then.  But when she just seems to want to inform me of the tenor of her dreams, I start getting pretty crabby.
Last night she called about the covers first, and then the 2nd time when she called I stumbled in grumbling and she said her sippy cup (in the bed to try and prevent night time water trips) was empty.  Grumble grumble fill her water cup.  When I brought it back to her she admitted she'd also had a bad dream.  I assured her as quietly (so as to not wake up Thing 1 in the upper bunk) as I could as firmly as I could that this has got to stop, I am really sorry she's having nightmares but she can't wake me up to tell me about it every night.  She started whining and saying but she's scared, I started shushing her, she gets more upset, shush, whine, shush, whine, until Thing 1 pops her head up and looks around the mostly dark room.
She sees that Something has Happened -
A couple of naughty Leprechauns had visited them last night, dangling underwear from the blades of the ceiling fan, posing the toys and stuffed animals around the room, draping clothes and blankets from drawers and chairs, basically messing up things a little.  Thing 1 was very excited. I told them to both go back to sleep, it was 4:40 am and they could see it in the morning.  Thing 2 started crying that she wanted to see it now.  I responded I don't care what you do, just do it quietly because I need to go back to bed.  She starts to cry.  I reemphasize turn the light on if you want, I don't care, just do it quietly.  She cries, I went back to bed.

Hubby is laying in bed getting frustrated, he gets up and goes in to put a stop to this middle of the night stuff, and tells Thing 2 in his firm voice that this has got to stop, at 6 years old she's old enough to pull her own covers back on, and put herself back to sleep if she has a bad dream.  She starts to cry.  Harder.  He tells her that by dragging us out of bed she's being very disrespectful of our need to sleep.  She starts to HOWL.  She insists we hate her, she's stupid, etc. etc. etc.  He calmed her down a little before he came back to bed, but the whole thing took about 15 minutes, and of course I can't go to sleep while its going on.

Sigh.

In other news, the girls were thrilled with last night's visit from the Leprechauns, Patrick O'Malley and his mischievous friend Fabian O'Flartey.  Thing 1 had written a note to any Leprechauns who stopped by, and Patrick wrote a reply on the back in his very very very tiny handwriting.  He responded to her questions about his size (6 inches), his pets (2 dragonflies, Moira and Blarney), and where he lives (in a highly secret place in Ireland) and told her he might have left her some Leprechaun gold but he knew she'd never find it in her messy room, which was a mess even before Fabian started throwing things about.   She had drawn a self portrait on her side of the paper, so Fabian drew a small picture of Patrick on the reply side of the note.  The girls were thrilled with the whole business.  
The nights' problems were forgotten by everyone but those of us who are most effected by the lack of sleep.