Oh, what a night!

All three of us were up at 1:00am last night. In a surprising role reversal, it was we who woke up Ben. Our carbon monoxide detector went off. Nothing like high pitched screeching to bolt you out of bed in the middle of the night. Luckily the nice fire fighters determined that the battery was just low and there was not, in fact, any gas in the house that shouldn't be there (resisting... Heath... fart... joke...).

Obviously Ben knew something was up, since we're not in the habit of waking him at 1:00am and spending 30 minutes hanging out in the car. While the fire fighters were doing their thing he was calm, but once they were gone and we tried to get him back to sleep, he was freaked out. I read him a story and he was frantically looking around, trying to figure out what happened. Then he started crying and lunged for Heath, so he gave Ben a bottle and sat with him for a while. We thought he was asleep, but he started crying again, so I rocked him until he finally fell asleep at 3:00am. I didn't get back to sleep for another 30-45 minutes after that.

So it was a tough night, but I'm proud of the way we handled it. We didn't freak out, Heath called 911, I gathered Ben and remembered to bring my cell phone and keys outside. I embraced the possibility that we might have to go somewhere else for the night. We were cool under pressure and it all seemed very parental.