Mystery solved (we hope!)

As I had feared, it was a bad night again last night. The smoke alarm first went off at 12:36 am, and then again moments later. It woke us up with a groan rather than a frenzied leap out of bed this time, as we knew it was coming. It did wake up poor Maren though, and she was terrified. It's a horrible thing as a parent to hear your child cry those frightened, frantic sobs and grip you like her little life depends on it because she's scared. I got her back to sleep quickly, despite her terror and attempted to get back to sleep myself. This whole stupid thing has been like Chinese Water Torture--I knew the smoke alarm was going to go off again and wake us up, but I didn't know if it would be in 5 minutes or in an hour. So I just laid awake, trying to will myself back to sleep but waiting warily for that horrible screech to come again.

And come it did--this time at around 4 a.m. Maren slept through that one, but woke screaming and scared again when the alarm rang 4 times in a row at 6 a.m. Oy. Mercifully, we both fell back asleep and the alarm hasn't rung again since, allowing us to sleep in.

I finally called the Fire Department this afternoon and spoke with a man who said that they hear about this same problem all the time. Normally when the battery in your alarm starts to die, the alarm beeps to alert you to change it. Since all the alarms in the house are connected, when one unit's battery starts to go, they all go off. The thing about the particular brand of smoke detector we have is that if you don't use Eveready batteries when you replace them, all kinds of problems can happen because for some reason they aren't compatible with the alarms. I pulled the battery out of the closest alarm and it is a Walgreens brand, put there by the previous owners of our house. You're supposed to change all the batteries in your smoke alarms once a year anyway, and we haven't ever done it in the 2 years we've lived here and who knows how long they were in before that, so I guess it's time for a change anyway. Quin's going to pick up 7 new Eveready 9 volts on his way home and tonight we'll have a battery-changing party, and then hope like crazy for a silent, peaceful night.