Low Battery.

So, Sunday night I tried to head to bed early since I was so tired. But I threw in a movie and watched the whole thing, then had to make my lunch, and other assorted crap that I do before bed. By the time I actually hit the sheets its 12:30 or so. Andrew is having an issue so he is waking up and crying. Lucky for me he goes back to sleep very fast, but unlucky for me the baby monitor is still in the room so I wake up every time he does this, which is frequently. Among the other stuff to keep me awake is the pouring rain that is keeping my sump pump activating every 2 or 3 minutes which ends with a "THUMP THUMP THUMP" after every cycle. For some reason I don't trust my sump pump and I am always afraid it's going to stop working and I will be totally hosed, especially since it runs so much. Also, Jenny is still at work so I usually try and keep an ear out to see if I can hear her come home. I think I finally get to sleep and hear "THUMP" at 2:30am. It's not the sump pump "thump" but the "thump" sound of either Jenny coming home from work or William falling out of bed. I don't hear William crying, but I decide to investigate. I find William on the floor of his bedroom asleap. Man, that's pretty tired if you can fall out of bed and not wake up. After all of that I get back to sleep to have the alarm go off in what seems like an hour later and I get up. Work was real fun Monday.

Monday night I decide to try and get to bed early, but again with my farting around and TV watching it's well after 11:30 before I finally hit the sheets. Now I go to sleep hard. Around 2:00am again I hear a noise in a subconscious state of mind. I am trying to wake myself up enough to see if I can comprehend what is going on (you know, that kind of sleep). I wake up enough to hear a "beep" and then an electronic voice like Star Trek saying something. I figure that it is one of the kid's toys with the battery going dead and it's freaking out. At this point I am seriously going to find this toy and chuck it out the back door. Usually I kid around that I am going to do that, but this time I meant it. I asked Jenny if she knew what was making the noise so I can get my pitching arm ready. She informs me that the smoke detector downstairs is beeping and saying "battery low". Damn. Both of our smoke detectors are hardwired into the electrical of the house and they are in conjunction with each other so if one goes off they both go off. Unfortunately this beep and voice is something that I can't sleep through, and we are afraid it will wake the boys up. I am still trying to wake up to make my brain work on how to solve the problem. It would be just easy to replace the battery, but I know that if I disconnect the detector downstairs, both of the detectors will go off since they have a backup system in place. Adding to the fun is that we aren't sure if we have a 9 volt battery in the house so we are trying to think of which of the kid's toys to canaballize. Luckily Jen finds a battery and I do the old tongue test on the connectors to make sure that the battery is still good, and it is. I go down and look at the detector and tell Jen to get ready for screaming kids since disconnecting this thing will surely make them go off. Sure as shit as soon as I unplug the detector they both go off. I am trying to change the battery as fast as possible, but it takes a minute to get everything unplugged and plugged. William wakes up screaming so Jen goes to comfort him (maybe we should have woke him up before). Andrew stirs, but never actually wakes up. That's a heavy sleep. Finally after the battery is changed and everything is plugged back in, the detectors have to do a start up procedure which involves more alarms going off and voices. Finally the house falls silent. I do the tounge test on the supposed bad battery and it has a full charge!! WTF? I need to get the instructions out on these detectors and see if they require a monthly test or if they know when it has been a year since their last battery. We have to calm William down and he finally goes to sleep. I have to calm down so I finally go to sleep around 3:30 or so. Of course I sleep through my alarm so I wake up late and get ready at warp speed. I don't know how, but I actually made it to work on time. Needless to say work was fun yesterday. I am not as tired as I should be, maybe I am getting used to interrupted sleep (noooooooooooo).