Vacation Hiccup

So before I proceed to talk about our little vacation hiccup, let me just share a little update about my grandfather.  He came out of surgery successfully yesterday and the last I heard around 530 in the afternoon was that he had not come out of anesthesia yet.  When I know more, I will share more, but the procedure went well according to the surgeon.   Now onto hiccups (not the kind your body gets).  Last week was smooth sailing up until Thursday night.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, our son is getting his two year molars and as the doctor put it after looking in his mouth, "Ooooo, that's bad".  As it went when he was getting all his initial baby teeth, he is getting most of his two year molars at once.  For the most part, he has done well with the pain, except for this past Thursday night when he woke up screaming bloody murder.  He had fussed, moaned, and screamed a little before the last out burst, but every time he stopped within a minute or two and went back to bed.  The last time there was no leaving him in his little tent to sleep it off.  We had to get him out of there lest we wake up the rest of the house.  As soon as I got him out of the tent, I asked him if his teeth were hurting and he started immediately shaking his head vigorously in the affirmative.  So, for the first time, we decided that we would let him sleep with one of us as we were in two separate twin beds for the week.   I tried having him lay with me first, and he stayed there for about a minute before getting up and running over to his Mommy's bed.  He stayed there for about a minute before running back over to my bed.  Well, long story short, he kept on running back and forth like it was a game and after the fifth time, I said to myself, "Enough is enough" and put him back in his tent.  As you probably guessed within the few seconds it took you to read that, it didn't go over well at all.  The second that he figured out that I was putting him back in the tent, he started screaming again.  My wife and I let him scream for about a minute before getting him back out of the tent and keeping him in my wife's bed.  She just let him lay there until he fell asleep, which took about 30 minutes, and by that time it was around 3:45 in the morning.  Yup, Friday was a little bit of a rough day for our son (and my wife) as they had gotten less than the ideal amount of sleep.  Me, I just drank more coffee and managed just fine. 

 

Then came Friday night, our last night.  He went down just fine as he had all week and we decided to get pizza for dinner.  Well, pizza is obviously popular on a Friday night on Cape Cod because even with calling in the order, the wait was a little bit over an hour.  My parents volunteered to get the pizza and while they were out, my brother, wife, and I decided to play some cards.  About 20 minutes before my parents got back with the pizza, the smoke alarm started going off.  Being a newer house, all the smoke alarms in the whole house are interconnected and hardwired with battery backup so that when one goes off, every single smoke alarm in the whole house goes off.  We counted, there were 6 smoke alarms going off at once and it might have been the most annoying and ear piercing sound I have ever heard combined with some annoying lady's voice telling us to evacuate the premises.  Well, seeing as we weren't cooking anything and the heat wasn't on, we got a little worried at first.  So we ran around trying to figure out what the issue was, which one was set off, and how do we stop them.  Seeing as there was no smoke in the house, I got really worried as two of the alarms also detect carbon monoxide.  So I ran up to our room to check on our son and crack the windows some to let in the fresh air.  He was breathing and our room had not triggered the alarm.  It turned out to be the one in the upstairs hallway.  After almost a minute, which seems like eternity when you have an ear piercing scream in your ear, it went off.  And our son slept through the whole ordeal.  He did toss and turn a little bit afterwards, but it appears that he is just like his Daddy in that once he is asleep he can sleep through just about anything.  Well, about 20 minutes later, the alarm went off again for a little less time than the first.  We started getting a little annoyed.  Then the third time happened and we started taking down smoke detectors as there was obviously nothing wrong in the house.  Good news was that our son slept through the three alarms.  We went to bed hoping we were in clear, but as it turns out, we weren't.  About 1:30 in the morning, it went off again.  I think I slept through that one as I only vaguely remember hearing it.  Then the fifth time happened at 3:30 and enough was enough, I ripped the one in our room right off the ceiling with a few choice words one of which began with the letter F.  Then our son woke up, followed by me uttering a extra choice words about the smoke alarms under my breath. 

There was no letting our son sleep this one off.  He was woken up by an ear piercing scream and he was obviously frightened.  So we got him out of his tent and I decided that it was my turn to let him sleep with me.  My wife was initially worried as I am a tosser and a turner in bed.  I move around, my arms flail, and my legs kick; but not when my son is in the bed.  It turns out that he is a tosser and a turner as well.  He started out with his head on my pillow and within 20 minutes had maneuvered himself around so that his head was facing the foot of the bed.  In the midst of that 20 minutes, I got a slight random kick to the jaw, but it was all good.  I turned over so that I was on the edge of the bed facing outwards and my legs were bent backwards reaching across the bed, a sort of barrier so that our son wouldn't go off the foot of the bed.  For the next 2 hours, I didn't move an inch.  When I woke up sometime between 530 and 6, I was in the exact same position as when I had fallen asleep.  I guess that when I need to sleep without moving, I can, it just takes a toddler being in bed with me to make it happen.  And with it being Saturday morning and time to go home, I was glad that the smoke alarms happened at the end of the week.  Later on as I was putting the smoke alarm back, I discovered that I hadn't broken it when I ripped it off the ceiling and it still functioned perfectly, I hoped.  My brother did a little research into the possible causes and found that if a house doesn't have enough electricity to power everything and a surge happens (like an A/C unit kicking on), smoke alarms that are hard wired could trip.  Well, Friday night was the first night we had to use the A/C in the house as it was getting a little bit humid and we deduced that it was the cause of all our night time woes.  So the few lessons we learned are as follows; our son will sleep through four smoke alarms, not five, and if your going to put in hardwired interconnected smoke alarms in your house, make sure that you have enough electricity running to your house in the first place.  Cheerio!