Sleepless nights are almost guaranteed for new parents.
Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have been up all night since their baby was born nine weeks ago. "Our baby in particular is we think allergic to sleep," the Woman in Gold star said on Monday's Tonight Show.
"I don't think that's possible," host and father of two Jimmy Fallon said. If James isn't "allergic to sleep," Reynolds has another theory about his daughter. "We think that she thinks she's protecting us from the sleep monsters," he explained. "Like, 'Oh, I've got to keep them up or the sleep monsters will get them.'"
"Babies don't care about you!" Fallon joked.
The actor is slowly but surely figuring out how to help his daughter sleep. "The trick I try to use is that Baby Einstein stuff, but for me, that's like horse tranquilizer. I could go down on a lit stove. You could push me out of an airplane," Reynolds joked, adding that inspires "the weirdest dreams in the world."
In all seriousness, the actor said, life with James is "so good."
"She's got me wrapped around her finger," Reynolds said. "I am a slave to the rhythm."
He called fatherhood "the best," saying, "I can't wait. It's just going to be teatime every day with her."
Maybe that's wishful thinking. "No, she's going to be a football player," Reynolds joked.
For better or worse, James' upbringing will be much different than her father's. "I came from a family of boys—homicidal boys," Reynolds joked. Fallon then showed a picture from Reynolds' youth. "As you can see here, my dad used to cut our hair with a hammer," he said. "It's really dull and it takes a long time."
According to Reynolds, life with three brothers was "nasty."
"We were terrible to each other," he recalled. "It was like an episode of Cops every weekend."
Reynolds' father was a police officer, but the cops were never at his house for "social visits." Instead, Reynolds recalled, "They were over at our house because people were being thrown through dry wall." The actor then pointed out that one of his brothers set a building on fire. Another brother cut a hole in his Volkswagen bug, Reynolds revealed, while another brother got in trouble for crashing motorcycles.
The actor said he doesn't witness that kind of chaos now that he's a father.
"We could end wars if we just carpet bombed places with baby head smell," he old Fallon, who agreed. "We'd just be like, 'What are we doing, guys? Come on. Let's lay down our arms. Let's high five each other to death." But, when some people want to smell his baby, Reynolds admitted, "It's a little creepy."
"When it's my Uncle Dale I'm like, 'No! No, you can't! Get back in your panel van and drive away!'"
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