My last bedtime was 2:30 AM. I’m tired.

Lack of sleep stories are some of the more humorous parenting tales, and yesterday my wife and I shaped a new doozy. We’d been given a baby monitor off our registry, and just got around to setting it up as Bump napped in the morning. We’re really not stressed about hearing every sound a sleeping child makes, but we figured we might as well use it.

Unlike the monitor we had with our first two kids this one has a “talk” feature on the receiver. As this was a new toy, I left my wife in the bedroom and headed downstairs to test this feature out. When I was back in ear shot of the receiver I could hear my wife cuddling with a just woken Bump and keyed the talk button.

“Hi ¹.”

There was no response. I keyed the talk button a second time.

“Hi Mommy.”

Still no response, but the sounds of my wife cooing to Bump kept coming through so I knew the monitor was working. I figured the speaker on the transmitter may have had its volume turned down to low to hear so I marched upstairs to check the settings.

“Did you hear me,” I asked as I picked up the unit.

My wife nodded. “Yes, but I couldn’t figure out how to make you hear me. How do you do that?”

“It’s a monitor, you just talk.”

My wife burst out laughing and twisted her face into a “der” look, and ever grunted, “Der!” as she laughed.

And that’s my story. Is it nap time yet?