Stephen King Must Be A Dad

Since I had children, I don't watch horror movies anymore. This has nothing to do with their tender sensibilities- it's because my kids can scare the bejesus out of me, no special effects or creepy theme music required. I swear, sometimes I think all I need is Alex talking to his finger and saying "redrum" to ensure I never sleep again. My kids always wake me around 3 am. I'll be catapulted out of deepest sleep either by bloodcurdling screams from their bedroom, or worse, a motionless shadow standing next to me silently breathing in my face. Either way, my heart does some seriously unhealthy acrobatics. And then there are those really creepy comments they have a knack for making- made all the worse by their sweet sing-song voices. Like the night I was putting Alex to bed and he was saying "night night" to everything in his room......."Nigh, nigh truck...nigh, nigh light...nigh, nigh girl..."......WTF!!!!! Night night girl? What girl!? Does he see some girl!? I calmly asked him about this girl (all the while imagining cold spots and preparing to douse the room in holy water), but he was only 2 and never elaborated further. Or the time my 11 month old daughter woke screaming bloody murder. I went tearing in there expecting pins in the pjs or something. Instead, she screamed hysterical, high pitched screams for a 1/2 hr. despite stripping her naked, rediapering, dressing, singing, bottle offers and changing the crib sheets....then abruptly stopped and just fell asleep in the space of 5 seconds. Or the night my husband was out of town and my 4 month old son stared and cooed at a dark, totally empty corner of the bedroom for about 15 minutes- I never did figure out what he was looking at. Then there's always the bad dreams, where they wake up (see "bloodcurdling screams" above) and proceed to tell you incoherent stories about the man that was in the room just a second ago who must now be under the bed or in the closet (or escaped from the local mental hospital with a hook for a hand maybe?). Or perhaps they merely try to sneak into bed with you-- via lifting up the covers at the foot of the bed and crawling in like a reject from some Japanese horror flick (I always end up like that cartoon cat, clinging to the ceiling by its fingernails). So you see, the sleepless nights of parenthood aren't always about midnight feedings or nighttime coughs. Sometimes it's screams, creepy comments and unexpected visitors that keep you up...so I don't need any extra help from Hollywood, thank you very much.