Upon waking, I looked out my bedroom window and could see the sheen of ice on top of the snow in the backyard:
 | ||
| That's Ben's car buried in the left-hand foreground after the kids brushed the snow off of it following the first snowfall! |
Freezing rain wreaks havoc on nature (and power lines) and soon the branches (and power lines) began falling. We live near a woodsy area and one could hear branches cracking and falling multiple times a minute! It was inevitable that the power would go out. Sure enough, right after breakfast we lost power. And heat.
Our power was out for a day and half (was it really that short? It seemed like forever when we were going through it!). I honestly cannot remember losing power before in such cold weather. And I certainly never had to care for three young children in such conditions. Boy, did it get cold in here! With no alternative heat source besides the heat pump, the temperatures began plummeting in the house. We did our best to stay warm, often cuddling up under blankets to read books, wearing three layers of clothes as well as hats and gloves (the gloves often came off: it is hard to convince children to keep their gloves on when playing with toys! :).
I found that I have taken many simple things for granted: HEAT, daily mail service, garbage service, giving my kids a bath, being able to use my dishwasher and washing machine, warm water to wash hands, etc! But nighttime was by far the worst. We all slept in one room to try to bring the temperature up a bit with our collective body heat. I slept very little, frequently getting up to adjust blankets and tuck icy cold hands under the covers. Abby slept next to me for awhile, then Jake nursed, then Ben ended up down on the floor next to me, and then finally Jake again. It was a long night! And then Ben woke up with a nasty chest-cough which I think was directly attributed to the cold night air.
If I didn't have young children (or if I had a fireplace and a gas stove! :), I think the situation would have been fun and adventurous. And though we did get some enjoyment out of it (watching a transformer blow, seeing the same power line fixed THREE times as more branches kept falling on it, eating by candlelight, lots of cuddles, etc), when the power came on the next afternoon, I did a happy dance and almost cried! A mama worries about her babies and I so wanted them to be warm!
Some of the snow is still here (nineteen inches takes awhile to melt!), but the roads have long been cleared. We finally got mail service yesterday evening, but our garbage can continues to sit overflowing on the sidewalk. Kevin started crab fishing. Things are mostly back to normal. Unfortunately, the sickness lingers even longer than the snow. Ben's cough has continued to get worse and he now has an earache too, and the light cold Jake developed from the power outage developed into croup last night. This morning, Abby played "mommy" to sickly Ben and made a little bed for him on the window bench.
How precious is that?
2 comments:
Brrrr, cold reading it. Snow camping with kids doesn't sound at all fun. Glad you made the best of it, but wow, that's a lot to endure. That kind of weather won't be visiting your area again hopefully.
Side not: my parent's power was out Thurs to Tues, but they are grown ups, they can handle it (actually they couldn't handle it and came south to visit us and enjoy our heat). :)
That is the sweetest pictures of Abby kissing Ben, poor buddy looks soooo sick!
Post a Comment