Last Night

Last night was interesting.

Before bed, while playing with Connor, I noticed that his little Cookie Monster needed to be cleaned. So, while I was scrubbing him down with a washcloth, Connor came over and starting signing about Cooking Monster having a bath. Then, he went and got one of his favorite tiny blankies, which are all just diaper burping cloths, but he loves them anyways, and brought it over to Cookie Monster to be used as a towel. So, after Cookie was all done, I wrapped him up in the blankie and told Connor to keep him warm.

That's when the game really started. Connor told me that Cookie was his baby, and I swaddled him up really good in that blankie. For the next 25-30 minutes we played with Baby Cookie. It was an interactive, imaginative type of play, with Connor actually directing it! Baby Cookie took a nap in mommy's bed, and Connor turned the lights out and told daddy "shh!" Baby Cookie got a bottle, and Baby Cookie got a diaper change. We were basically playing house, and Baby Cookie did all the things that Connor gets to do, but this time Connor was the one taking care of the baby. It was so precious!

Needless to say, Connor got to bed a little bit late because of all the fun. (And I was seriously having fun.)

Then, around 1:00 AM, the fire alarms in our house went off. We have three fire alarms, and they are hardwired into our security system. I was totally disoriented because I didn't know where Kevin was (he had fallen asleep on the couch), but I knew that I didn't want to be outside in 7 inches of snow in nothing but my nightgown. Ugh!

There was no fire. This isn't the first time that this has happened. It happened once before, and we actually called the fire department that time. When smoke detectors get old, they can malfunction - sometimes some dust can make the sensor think that there is smoke. That first time, we replaced the malfunctioning unit. Hindsight is 20/20, and now I realize that we should have replaced all three units back then. Well, one of the remaining two old units was malfunctioning last night, and we were woken up a second time by our house going crazy with alarms around 3:00 AM.

Connor didn't wake up the first time, but he did wake up the second time. I remember reading somewhere that children under the age of 8 typically won't be woken up by a regular fire alarm, and that you need to get one that has a voice that screams out "wake up, fire, get out of the house" in order to get small children out of their beds. Since Connor is in a crib, that really doesn't do us any good right now. But we might look into it for the future.