Noise

I've always been someone who is very sensitive to noise. I don't like it when there is too much noise or different noises happening at the same time. It drives me crazy if their is music playing while the TV is on (Just thinking about it makes me feel stressed out!) and if I'm in a big group of people and there are too many conversations happening at the same time I just end up sitting there not able to listen to anyone. My sensitivity to noise doesn't just affect me but also my husband, Matt. One of the ways it affects him is if I go to bed before him or have a nap, he has to listen to the TV on volume 1 or else I can't fall asleep (Listening to the TV at this volume often requires him to sit on the carpet right in front of the TV or use his headphones with only one deafeningly loud volume. My poor husband!). 
Now that we have Claire my already sensitive ears are always on high alert. When she was very little it didn't seem to bother her but now she definitely has a love-hate relationship with noise. She loves making noise but hates it when other people do. Claire is a very loud child. Her cry is more like a fire truck siren than any human cry I've ever heard and when she babbles she loves to be the loudest one in the room. But even though Claire herself is very loud, she is still often startled by other noises which normally people would not find startling at all, like the furnace going on, someone going up or down the stairs or someone saying "hi" to her. She usually no longer cries at these noises but often looks like a bomb has just gone off right beside her if any "unexpected" noises happen. 
Because Claire is so sensitive to noise when she is awake, I always worry about the amount of noise happening when she is asleep. I often tip toe or at least try to walk lightly around the house when she is napping and usually try to find quiet activities to do (like blogging and making felt books, but I leave all the stuff that requires the sewing machine until she is awake). 
When Claire was younger and not sleeping very well my anxiety about noise was way worse and in the evening after Claire went to bed my husband and I would both sit and watch TV on volume 1, not able to hear a word, whispering back and forth trying to figure out what was going on. This made TV watching quite a chore and really took all the fun out of it. It was even less fun for Matt because if he ever would talk above a whisper I would shush him (shushing comes so naturally to me because when I was teaching I would do it all day)! He really didn't like this.
I'm beginning to be a bit more relaxed about noise now that Claire usually sleeps quite well (we also bought a really great noise machine for her room, which I admit is way more for me than for her) but I still often have to fight the urge to shush people when I think things are getting a bit loud.