Monitoring the Monitor

We're on our second monitor, and up until this week, I thought it was the best one out there. And very inexpensive, compared to the first one we had, which had more electronics and wires in its packaging than it did in the actual monitor. A couple of days ago, we woke up as the sun was rising and boy did we feel well rested. And as we did our stretching that you do when you've gotten a full, lovely, hard night's sleep, we thought, "Wow! Aidan was so quiet last night!" And just as the horror strikes you that your alarm never went off and you're late for work and there was a meeting scheduled that morning that you're expected to give a presentation at but you don't have time to shower, we looked at the monitor and realized it lost power sometime during the night, and that's why it was so quiet. Evan leapt out of bed and ran into the baby's room, and sure enough, he was sleeping soundly on his side, but all I kept thinking was how long he must have cried during the night before he realized his bad mom wasn't coming in to get him! I'll never know the answer to this, but for a couple of days, we kept BOTH receivers on in the bedroom until the faulty one quietly sputtered out and wouldn't turn on at all. But last night as we were falling asleep after our umpteenth episode of Deal or No Deal in the last week and a half, the other one stopped working too. So I picked up my pillow, grabbed my old leopard-spotted comforter that I've had since high school and schlepped across the house to sleep on the floor of the baby's room. About four hours in, Evan and I switched. Of course, Aidan slept soundly through the night until early this morning. So today I'll spend the day installing that can with the string on it and teaching Aidan how to yell into it should he need anything at night. Then I'll write a strongly worded letter to Fisher Price, because of course I didn't keep the receipt or the box to return the monitor. Then I'll take a nap.