Rude Awakening

Some time ago, my husband bought an intercom system for our children to use in the middle of the night to contact us, instead of having to come into our room. It is a rare night indeed when I am not awakened by at least one of my children - human or feline - between the hours of 10 PM and 6 AM. So now instead of our children coming in to bug me in the night, they can simply stay in their beds and beep us to death.

Well, we didn't actually try this method until last night, although we've had the darned intercom units for about 6 months. We're kind of procrastinators. Anyway, my husband thought last night would be a good time to start since I was feeling sickly. And we need to permanently banish the cats from our room as well, according to my allergist. So, the hubby locked the door and turned on the intercom.

Annoyingly, even after taking a sleeping pill, I woke up around 4 AM and tossed and turned for about an hour. Finally I drifted back into a nice deep sleep, until. . . .

BEEP!

"Honey", I said, "One of the kids is beeping you." No response.

BEEP!

Still he didn't budge. The one problem with his plan is that he sleeps about 10 times more heavily than I do. I wake up when his breathing pattern shifts from "distant thunder" to "dog whistle." He might possibly wake up with an ambulance siren in the room, but it's iffy.

BEEP!

Finally, he rolled over, hit the button, and mumbled, "What?"

From the other end came this adorable little 5-year-old voice, "Daddy, Faith and I are going to go downstairs and watch TV", followed by a little giggle which signified that he thought this process was pretty cool.

"Roger, roger", said my husband, in an official tone.

Ahh, very nice. I started drifting off again.

BEEP!

The hubby rolls over again, "What?"

Same cute voice responds, "Hi!"

"Hi."

Drifting. 2 more minutes go by.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

"WHAT???"

Only giggling and snickering come from the other end now. But my husband is not sufficiently peeved to get out of bed and tell them to knock it off. Meanwhile, I am stifling laughter under the covers.

3 more minutes.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. "Dad, do you read me? Dad, do you read? Over."

Mumbling hubby: "Yes, now go downstairs."

Milliseconds later. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! "Dad, do you read me?"

Dad: "Not any more!" Click.

With the unit turned off, he rolled over to resume his Saturday morning sleep-in.

I, on the other hand, had been laughing so hard that I almost fell out of bed. Kind of hard to go back to sleep after that. So I got up, started my coffee and discovered the 2 little rascals in the living room, still trying to contact Dad, as they had unplugged the unit and brought it downstairs with them so they could continue their little chat-fest with Daddy at dawn.

I think they missed the point.