Hey, what does this button do?

I've been so focused on waiting for this baby to come out that I've completely neglected this blog.  Earlier this week, I recieved a blog award from one of my oldest friends LVDMF who writes about her experiences as a doggie foster-mom here,  at A Heartbeat at My Feet.  I'm still a tad preoccupied with the impending baby, so rather than actually follow through on the rules of the Liebster award, let me just be lazy and instead say I'm honored that a non-Mom would be reading and laughing at my mom-blog.  I miss you and I wish we all still lived a few miles from each other so we could sneak out at night together like in High School... (if you're my Mother or LVDMF's mother, ignore that last part)

Back to what you've missed in the last few weeks.  Chester climbed up on the chair tonight while I was making dinner with a friend, and started playing with the alarm keypad by the back door.  L jumped up to move him, but I reassured her that the keypad is disconnected.  I know this for sure, at least I do now! 

Two weeks ago, as I prepared dinner, Chester pulled up a chair and stood up to press buttons on the alarm keypad.  I didn't blink an eye because he's done this a million times before, and it makes a very nice, satisfying "beep" sound with each button he presses.  It's entertaining for him, and as far as I knew, it was harmless fun while I focused on dinner.  After all, that alarm isn't activated, it's not connected through a phone line to a call center, nor to the local police.  When we bought the house, we didn't get an alarm code, the alarm had been inactive for years before we even moved in.  What I didn't know is that the alarm still has a loudspeaker on the outside of my house, and that there's a sequence on my keypad  that acts as a panic button to activate a local alarm.  More than five years after we bought the house, Chester discovered that sequence and set off the alarm.

There's total chaos as our alarm is sounding, dinner is on the stove (probably burning), both boys are running in circles trying to figure out what the heck is going on!  Ryan is yelling over the alarm, asking why I'm not watching the boys, letting them play with the alarm, and how do I turn it off?  Ryan checked outside for wiring to clip, but the alarm is attached 20 feet off the ground, so he retreated to the basement to look for the power source.  I was reading the panel on the alarm, searching for instructions, which to my dismay indicated I should enter the alarm code to disarm it.  Then I remembered there's a master panel in the front closet.  I grabbed a screwdriver and opened the panel.  I clipped every wire I could find, and the alarm stopped.  The whole incident only took five minutes, and thankfully my neighbor was already on the way over to check that we were okay.  I love the R family for being our surrogate family and keeping an eye out for us! 

Sadly, the alarm panel no longer gives Chester that satisfying beep when he pushes buttons, but in the grand scheme of things, I'll take that over a repeat performance of the alarm incident.  So he can stand there, for as long as pushing buttons is entertaining to him, because at least I know for sure now that he can't do any further damage.