An Alarming First Night

Or course after blogging about what a nice evening Brennan and I had last night, something would have to go wrong. I went to bed around 11 and woke up just before 2am and looked at the time on my phone. Before I had fallen back asleep, the smoke detectors in the house started going off. Just one or two beeps each, sort of echoing one another. They weren't going off like there was smoke or a fire, but the loud sound certainly startled me. I got out of bed just to make sure everything was okay and waved a towel under the upstairs alarms and got back into bed.

Then they went off again. This time I got up and decided to check the detector in the basement. Our drop ceiling covers it up, so I got a chair, removed the tile, and could tell that one was pretty dusty. It was also blinking red, so I assumed it needed a new battery. I went to get one and we were out of 9-volts. Of course.

I dusted the outside of the alarm and used canned air to try and clean it the best I could inside. I didn't want to the take the battery out because from what I remembered that causes them to beep even more. Cleaning seemed to help a little. The other smoke alarms didn't go off anymore, but for the rest of the night the one in the basement kept chirping since it needed a new battery. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to sleep through it, but did managed to sleep on and off from 4-7.

Determined to have a better day than night, I took Brennan to the playground again today. I love his new Kentucky jersey!

After playing hard, we went to get new batteries. Once home, I immediately went to replace the basement one. I got the old battery out, but for the life of me couldn't, and still can't, get the new one in. I then went to the solver of all problems, Google, and looked up our specific brand of smoke detectors. I learned that the batteries are only used if the power goes out and read that sometimes the alarms just need to be reset. I pressed the silence/reset button and viola! No more beeping. Even without a new battery.

If only I had known that last night!

I will now add "having husband change all smoke detector batteries" to my pre-deployment honey do list!