Last night  – or technically in the wee hours this morning if you’re going for full accuracy – I was awakened by a sudden cry from Miss T.  The baby monitor was turned up a little too loud so even though she didn’t need intervention, it was too late.  I was already awake.

(Brief tangent – I’m always impressed that these days I’m so easily awakened by one single baby yelp.  I used to be such a heavy sleeper that I couldn’t even wake up to an alarm.  My mom would call me on exam days my freshman year of college because it was entirely likely that I would turn off the alarm in my sleep and completely miss my test.  And in high school she used to have to throw cold water on me to get me out of bed.)

(Brief tangent #2, confidential to Val – Bong bong Rita.)

So anyway, I was lying there awake, listening to the sounds of a toddler snoring over the monitor, when a fairly loud clicking sound began.  Very rhythmic clicking, like a metronome.  It clicked for about two minutes or so, then stopped.  I did not hear it again.

I’ve been thinking about it all day, and for the life of me I cannot figure out what in the bloody hell could have been making that noise.  At the time, my groggy mind reasoned that it was her rainforest music thing.  It has a couple of different settings, one of which moves the animals up and down.  We just leave it on the music-only setting because the lights and motion are very distracting, but Miss T has recently figured out where the switches are.  So in the middle of the night I convinced myself that the clicking must be the animals moving.  But when I checked on it today, it was exactly as it should have been.  Nothing had been changed.

N was the one to get Miss T out of her crib this morning, so I asked him if anything had been amiss.  No, he said, everything seemed normal.  I’m not sure what I was expecting him to find, but something had to have been making that sound.

Now it tasks me.  WTF was that?  It wasn’t Miss T banging on the crib unless she is some sort of rhythmic savant.  The sound was too uniform.  There isn’t a metronome anywhere in our house as far as I know.  There certainly isn’t one in Miss T’s room.  The only other possibility I can think of is this thing.  It makes a similar sound when it is turned on.  WHICH IT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.

Something hinky is afoot.  It just better not be a poltergeist.  There’s simply no extra room in this house.  We’re full, thanks very much.