It had been five minutes since I turned on the sound machine in my daughter’s room. At just over one year old, she is the world’s most sensitive sleeper fifty percent of the time. We tiptoe when we walk down her hallway, and we refuse to watch anything with guns or a laugh track after 7pm. When baby sleeps well, we all sleep well. You know the drill.

I cautiously closed her door. The heaping load of unfolded laundry on the counter in the hall begged me to fold at least a few pieces while our three year old wrapped up his movie. I grabbed a towel, because everyone knows it’s best to fold the biggest pieces first, adding to the illusion of productivity. That’s when I heard it.

Rhett’s pager.

Loud and clear.

I dared to wait the three minute waiting period before it would beep again: the sound of the unanswered page. I stood still, as if movement would scare it into silence. While my body stood still, I had ample time to organize my thoughts into two categories:

1. All the reasons I love my wonderful, hardworking husband

2. All my new strategies to calmly and rationally convince him that if he didn’t learn to turn off his pager when he got home, I would donate it to some black-ops government agency for use in their inhumane suspect interrogations

Three minutes later, my suspicions were confirmed. That cursed sound was coming from our daughter’s bedroom. There was no reason Rhett would have carried it in there, and I knew our crawling baby’s hands were too small. That left one suspect: the toddler.

Knowing whose fault it was served only one purpose now. Thinking like a toddler, I had a shot at finding the pager before it woke up the baby and ruined sleep cycles for the whole household for weeks to come. I slowly pushed the door open, heard the soft sound of snoring, and proceeded in. I stood in the middle of the room and scanned the floor, like there was any chance he had hidden it anywhere obvious. Nothing. I waited for the next page, hoping I could triangulate its location if I listened hard enough.

The next time it beeped, my eyes dashed to the corner of the room that housed our son’s favorite toy these days: a “briefcase” full of doctor toys. I lifted the box off the ground like I was trying to avoid detonating it. My footsteps would be silent if I could just avoid stepping on something that squeaked, sang, or rattled. I made it out of the room without incident, and when I opened the box, sure enough, there it was.

Of course. Why wouldn’t he collect dad’s pager to go along with his medical supplies? How sensible of him.

My son and I have had our fair share of tiffs about bedtime, snack time, swim lessons, and maybe a few other things. I just didn’t know he had taken his concerns to the next level, and joined forces with the Pager Pixie in her efforts to torment me. Game on, Pager Pixie. You haven’t heard the last of me. One of these days, you’ll meet your watery grave.