I wish I had a baby mind reading device

So, even though both of the kids talk, quite a bit actually and sometimes to the point of being annoying, they rarely tell me anything useful. If you ask them directly about something, they will almost always instead tell you about one of their toys. You can ask yes or no questions, but you can easily get them to tell you that aliens pushed them down the stairs and made them cry. It goes something like this.

Mom: Why are you sad?
Child: Crying
Mom: Did you get hurt?
Child: Shakes head affirmatively
Mom: How did you get hurt?
Child: Crying
Mom: Did you fall on the stairs (lets assume here that you heard loud thumping coming from the stairs)
Child: Shakes head affirmatively
Mom: How did you fall? Did you trip?
Child: Shakes head no
Mom: Did someone push you (already suspecting the sibling)
Child: Yes, they did.
Mom: Who
Child: The bad people
Mom: What bad people?
Child: The ones like Buzz Lightyear
Mom: What do you mean? Like toys?
Child: No. They fly.
Mom: Spacemen?
Child: Yes, flying spacemen pushed me and it hurt. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Anyway, Kiera is still screaming when being put to bed (not every night mind you) and waking up at night. I was up for an hour with her last night. I have no idea why. Is she going through some kind of new phase of separation anxiety? Is she just really tired? Did I cave incorrectly one night and now she knows my weakness? Is she in pain? Is she scared? If only she could actually tell me what the actual problem is. Of course, maybe she is, maybe all she really wants is for me to rub her back all night long. Sigh. Yet another point of contention for Jeff and I. He thinks we should let her scream indefinitely, I am not so cool with that. We let her cry for 30 min tonight, he went in and rubbed her back, she cried for another 5 min and went to sleep. Let's hope she stays asleep tonight. Jeff and I are going to kill each other if we can't get a decent night's sleep.

On the bright side, I had the kids to myself on Fri night so we rented a movie and made popcorn. It was fun for me and them. But really how can you go wrong with hot, buttered popcorn?