Chaos and Comisseration

Fellow parents in the trenches.   The following is the chaos that occurred earlier this week...

 My husband and I had a rough night earlier this week.  Basically, just as we were nodding off a smoke detector noise (the low backup battery noise) started going off.  This was after our son was sleeping soundly.  Next, followed the search for what smoke detector it was, along with an incredibly nervous dog.  I thought his thunderstorm anxiety was bad.  Apparently, his alarm anxiety is worse.  I often find in the exam room the bigger the dog, the bigger the baby.  The cat was annoyed at the noise and if she could, would have given it an obscene gesture.  I'm sure if we had a terrier, it would have tried to attack the monitor.  What does our 65 pound dog do?  He tries to climb in the toddler bed (the same bed I'm trying to keep my son asleep in.  What ensued ended up becoming a rodeo-style wrangling for both my husband and I, and of course the toddler woke up.

Everyone was grumpy.  We ended up figuring out after almost every smoke detector was removed and inspected on our top floor that it was the carbon monoxide detector.  My husband changed the battery and the thing was still going off.  I was about ready to chuck it through the window.  Anyway, everybody tried to get back to sleep.  Somewhere in the night the toddler got up and got into our bed, everyone was restless and my husband and I were being battered.  It finally resulted in my husband saying he was going to sleep in my son's fire truck bed and then a mattress coming into our room and my son confessing to my husband he didn't care where Daddy slept, he just wanted to sleep with Mommy.

I ended up in the guest bedroom with my son,and at this point he stopped battering me.  When we went in to childcare that day, I mentioned something to the director about tips for getting my son to sleep in his bed.  She responded with an equally exasperated, "Yeah, I'm definitely not one to talk about that, tell me if you find the answer to that question."  The facial expression and emotion conveyed immediately made me feel better this season is not a parenting fail.  It is a season and we will get through this and in the meantime, there's good coffee in this world and fellow parents in the trenches.