So, we had a super eventful week here two weeks ago. Two (almost three) natural disasters in four days! The Big Man was out of town Monday-Friday, so it was just me and the Little Man weathering two of the storms.
First was Tuesday. I was just chilling out, watching DVR while the Little Man was up in his crib. He wasn't sleeping (but I had left him up there for about an hour, just to have some quiet resting time). I heard a truck go by, but it got really loud. For a minute, I thought a bulldozer was going to crash through our wall. When the noise didn't die down, and the floor started shaking, I knew something was seriously wrong, and figured we were having an earthquake. Immediately, I was panicking. Thoughts rushed through my head at a million miles an hour: LM's upstairs! Should I get myself to safety and get him later (thoughts of "put your own mask on first, then put the mask on the child" were happening here)? But, if the house falls, he's not going to make it up there by himself, and he doesn't even have a chance, since he can't get out of his crib on his own. I ran up the stairs (I didn't know I could move that fast), all the while thinking, if this keeps getting worse at this rate, I won't have time to make it to safety with him. I don't think I was ever so scared as I was at that moment. I rushed into his room, plucked him from the crib and started back down the stairs, saying "It's OK, we're OK, you're OK, it's OK." By the time I got down the stairs, I realized that it was over, and tried to switch on the news. I was shaking so much I could hardly hold the remote. Then, no one was talking about what just happened! It was a good 10 minutes before the news coverage started. After watching for a while and no one telling me to seek shelter or evacuate or anything (I've never been in an earthquake, I didn't know what to do), I finally put the Little Man down to play. I texted my mom, who is famous for her caution about severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, and told her that, with all of the natural disasters she had prepared me for, she had never prepared me for an earthquake! Then I started to cry. Really slightly scary crying, just releasing all this energy and fear. I was pretty hysterical. Poor LM, he was freaked out that I was crying, and he started crying, too! He kept telling me "V-voom, v-voom" (he was trying to show me a truck in a book). I just cuddled him and tried to calm down, and we had a few minutes of snuggles. This was followed by several hours of texting Big Man, my mom, and my neighbor. Assuring everyone we were OK, asking if they were, too. I really wanted to TALK to someone, but of course all the cell signals were too jammed. It's probably better that I had to wait, since I didn't just bawl on the phone!
So, Wednesday, as a return to some sort of normalcy, Little Man and I went out to lunch with a friend of ours who works from home. We had our neighbors over for dinner that night, too.
Thursday, there was lots of rain coming in the evening. There was a tornado warning for the county just south of us, and the sky here was getting all yellowy-green, which I knew couldn't be a good sign. I started to panic a bit, so I packed up two bags of supplies in case the Little Man and I needed to go to the basement. One bag of stuff that was in the pantry and could go right into the emergency bag (because you can't carry a bunch of stuff with a baby, and because what if I didn't have time to make two trips), and one bag of stuff to leave in the fridge until the last moment. I was even going to pack ice packs to throw into the cooler downstairs for a makeshift fridge. Luckily, nothing happened, but after Tuesday's insanity, I was overly cautious (or just cautious enough, if you ask my mom).
After chatting on the phone with the Big Man on Thursday night, I realized that we should stock up on some supplies for the impending hurricane coming that weekend. Being a housewife, I don't get much chance to watch adult news. I had heard a little about the hurricane coming, but like many hurricanes before, I figured it would just be a lot of rain, nothing to worry about, and no need to be one of the crazies at the grocery store stocking up on toilet paper, milk and eggs (besides which, LM can't have milk or eggs anyway, so they're not really a good option for food stores at the moment). So I went out and got 4 gallons of water (far less than the 9 gallons recommended), and a bunch of fruit, bread, and almond milk. The wind started first, on Saturday morning, and the rest of the day was spent inside a deluge. It was a little unreal. I felt like I was inside a dollhouse or something, pressing my nose to the sliding glass door to try to see what was going on outside. I think I will only ever remember the hurricane in little rectangles of the landscape that I can see from my windows.
We moved the Little Man into our bedroom in his Pack 'n' Play for the night, as the Big Man and I were both too worried about leaving him upstairs all alone (our house has the Master BR on the first floor, and the other bedrooms on the second). LM was excited to have a special sleepover in Mommy and Daddy's room. At about 10:45, our power went out for about half an hour, which was no biggie, except that we could see the big green flashes from where the tree must have fallen on the power lines. At about (I think) 4 AM or so, there was a big noise, and more explosion flashes from down the street and we lost power again. Big Man couldn't sleep, so he stationed himself in the basement to monitor the situation.We got a few inches of water, mostly because the power outage caused the sump pump to stop working. One big casualty was that all of our outgrown baby clothes were in diaper boxes on the floor, so they all got wet. I spent the next week washing and refolding baby clothes (and putting them into our newly-acquired plastic storage bins), so I think I saved almost everything. We lost one top and two pairs of pants that had stained, but that I wasn't so attached to I had to really try HARD to save.
We laid everything that got wet out on the patio after the rains had stopped, but forgot to bring the outdoor furniture cushions back in before the next few days' deluge, so they all got soaked anyway. They're dry now, and seem to be OK. They've held up pretty well after being left out in previous rains.
Have any of you had an experience that was really scarier than you expected? Have you ever really thought you might not make it out? Have you ever had as many as 2 1/2 natural disasters in a week's time?
