Nightcrawler

I learned something very disturbing about my daughter last week when we were at my parent's house.  When we stay there, Kira and I share a room.  One night I went out and came home late.  She was still awake.   I said, "Why are you still up?" and she said, "Because I was just about to go on a night crawl."  I said, "What???"  And then she shut our room light off, dropped to her knees, opened the door and crawled out.  I thought she was just being creepy and was going to crawl into the bathroom in the dark and scare the crap out of me, but when I went in there to brush my teeth she wasn't there.  In the middle of my bathroom routine, she crawled in, shut the light off, and then crawled out.  When I got back to our room she was in there and I said, "What did you do?"  She said, "I told you. I went on a night crawl."  And then she went to sleep.

Here at home Kira has door beads that rattle whenever she goes in or out of her room.  Last night before bed she was tying them to the side and I asked her why she does that sometimes.  She said, "Because I'm going to get up at 3:30 and go on a night crawl and I don't want anyone to hear me." I said, "That's why you tie your beads back?  How long have you been night crawling?"  She said, "A long time."

Mitch got home late last night and I said, "Did you notice that Kira's beads are tied back?  She does that because she gets up in the middle of the night and crawls around the house in the dark. She calls it 'night crawling.' Apparently she does it on a pretty regular basis."  Mitch was totally creeped out.  When we went to bed he said, "Do you think we should shut and lock our door? I think we should.  Go lock it."  I said, "Why? It's not like she's going to kill us, she is just going to silently crawl up to the side of the bed in the dark in the middle of the night and stare at us for a while and then crawl away.  Where's the harm?" and Mitch shuddered.  I don't think he slept very well last night.