can you hear us?

Baby monitors are pretty handy devices. We set up the base unit of Zuzu’s monitor, which has the mic, in our bedroom for now since that’s where her bassinette is. Right off the bat we discovered, at Ty’s expense, that it picks up all the sounds from our adjacent bathroom too, which immediately led to some practical jokes. We also randomly whisper things into the mic to make the other person laugh somewhere else in the house, especially when late night tired silliness kicks in. Oh, and we do use it to hear Zuzu too.

Last week I was perplexed when Zuzu’s baby monitor didn’t pick up the click-click sound of her swing while she was in our bedroom. It turns out I had forgotten to turn on the base unit, but I was still hearing things through the receiver: a child’s muffled voice, the clang of a pan, footsteps running past the mic. We had picked up interference from another baby monitor in the area.

For about the first five seconds after discovering this, we thought the idea of hearing someone else’s monitor was pretty entertaining, especially since we don’t watch much TV these days… until we were mortified by the realization that if we could hear someone else, someone else could hear us.

Needless to say, we’re grateful for good neighbors, who may have been just as flabbergasted as we were upon learning we were capable of picking up each other’s monitors, but were quite gracious about the whole thing. If they heard our bathroom pranks they were kind enough not to share that with us, although I’d have to say one thing: that would make for some great blog material.