Alarm. Alarm. Alarm.
Ellie woke me up this morning at 1:15. Nothing good ever follows when you’re woken up at 1:15am. My mind buzzed with every undesirable event that was important enough to wake me from my slumber: Abbie is awake, Ellie feels sick (more so than the past few days), the dog is whining, the kitchen is on fire, the dog is on fire.
Instead I hear, “the radio is on in Abbie’s room.” I rose to figure out how in the world that happened because I know her alarm clock radio wasn’t on when I went to sleep, and I know Abbie can’t climb out of her crib yet and God help us all if she can.
I opened the door expecting to see a very awake and annoyed toddler since the radio was playing at a volume loud enough to wake the Boston Red Sox offense. Instead she was still horizontal in bed and just as out of it as the Chicago Cubs. I immediately turned the volume dial to low, and spent the next minute poking it trying to figure out how to turn it off, and to figure out how it turned on in the first place. Eventually I found the off switch, and determined that the Abbie must have set the alarm to go off.
The alarm clock in her room has become one of her favorite toys. It does so many things for her. If she pushes one button (the sleep button) the radio turns on. If she pushes another button (the snooze button), it turns off. She can go back and forth between these two buttons for a toddler eternity (2.741 earth minutes), and when she tires of the game, she can throw it on the ground and watch it bounce. I believe that during one of her bouncing sessions, she inadvertently flipped the alarm switch to “on” on its way to the floor.
Even though she may be smart enough to turn on the alarm, she still isn’t smart enough to set the alarm’s time. The alarm was still set to its factory preset of 12:00am, meaning it had been playing music* for 75 minutes when I intervened, and amazingly Abbie slept through the entire ordeal (as far as I know).
Now I feel a little stupid for tiptoeing around the house while Abbie sleeps. If she can sleep through static and British accents reading news for more than an hour straight without waking to complain (I know I couldn’t) surely she can sleep through the little noises I make around the house during her naps.
For example, I shower in the dark while she naps. We have one switch in our bathroom that controls the drag out fan and the lights. Once a long time ago, Abbie woke up from her nap amazingly early while I showered. The next day I showered with the lights and fan off, and she napped right through it. Logic told me that it must be the sound of the drag out fan waking her up, which made sense because her room is adjacent to the bathroom. Never mind the question of why the sound of water running through the shower also didn’t wake her up, the drag out fan theory made sense to my sleep deprived, 3am feeding mind.
Now I don’t know if it’s okay for me to shower with the lights on again. I would sure enjoy seeing the soap bottle again. Maybe I just need to set the alarm to go off at my shower time, ensuring strains of NPR drown out the fan noise.
* When I say “music,” I mean “The BBC World Service” because I leave almost every radio in the house, including her alarm clock, tuned to NPR at all times. That way I don’t have to waste precious Daniel Schorr commentary time searching for the proper frequency. My alarm clock however is tuned to commercial music because nothing gets me out of bed in the morning quicker than hearing Kajagoogoo.
Instead I hear, “the radio is on in Abbie’s room.” I rose to figure out how in the world that happened because I know her alarm clock radio wasn’t on when I went to sleep, and I know Abbie can’t climb out of her crib yet and God help us all if she can.
I opened the door expecting to see a very awake and annoyed toddler since the radio was playing at a volume loud enough to wake the Boston Red Sox offense. Instead she was still horizontal in bed and just as out of it as the Chicago Cubs. I immediately turned the volume dial to low, and spent the next minute poking it trying to figure out how to turn it off, and to figure out how it turned on in the first place. Eventually I found the off switch, and determined that the Abbie must have set the alarm to go off.
The alarm clock in her room has become one of her favorite toys. It does so many things for her. If she pushes one button (the sleep button) the radio turns on. If she pushes another button (the snooze button), it turns off. She can go back and forth between these two buttons for a toddler eternity (2.741 earth minutes), and when she tires of the game, she can throw it on the ground and watch it bounce. I believe that during one of her bouncing sessions, she inadvertently flipped the alarm switch to “on” on its way to the floor.
Even though she may be smart enough to turn on the alarm, she still isn’t smart enough to set the alarm’s time. The alarm was still set to its factory preset of 12:00am, meaning it had been playing music* for 75 minutes when I intervened, and amazingly Abbie slept through the entire ordeal (as far as I know).
Now I feel a little stupid for tiptoeing around the house while Abbie sleeps. If she can sleep through static and British accents reading news for more than an hour straight without waking to complain (I know I couldn’t) surely she can sleep through the little noises I make around the house during her naps.
For example, I shower in the dark while she naps. We have one switch in our bathroom that controls the drag out fan and the lights. Once a long time ago, Abbie woke up from her nap amazingly early while I showered. The next day I showered with the lights and fan off, and she napped right through it. Logic told me that it must be the sound of the drag out fan waking her up, which made sense because her room is adjacent to the bathroom. Never mind the question of why the sound of water running through the shower also didn’t wake her up, the drag out fan theory made sense to my sleep deprived, 3am feeding mind.
Now I don’t know if it’s okay for me to shower with the lights on again. I would sure enjoy seeing the soap bottle again. Maybe I just need to set the alarm to go off at my shower time, ensuring strains of NPR drown out the fan noise.
* When I say “music,” I mean “The BBC World Service” because I leave almost every radio in the house, including her alarm clock, tuned to NPR at all times. That way I don’t have to waste precious Daniel Schorr commentary time searching for the proper frequency. My alarm clock however is tuned to commercial music because nothing gets me out of bed in the morning quicker than hearing Kajagoogoo.
posted by Matt at
10:03 PM
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