It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Friday night Rye caught the inevitable 1st sickness. He was up most of the night and by morning he'd developed a lot of extra "friends" in his nose. Poor guy spent Saturday sniffing and experiencing the joy that is a fever.
We were worried enough about the little tyke as is but then around 5pm the power went out. Mind you there is a good 6" of snow on the ground and it is COLD outside. We waited (somewhat) patiently for the first couple of hours but by 9pm, with no light, no heat and a sick baby on our hands, we were becoming...perturbed. Thankfully we have a wood stove that heats the house quite sufficiently (when the fan is plugged in). Since it looked like we were in for the long haul (the message from EPB--local power company--said that they are experiencing quite a few outages so it could be a while) we began the preparations of barricading the house.
This included: closing all curtains (oh how i wish i had bought curtains that functioned instead of decorated), lighting all available candles (for heat reasons at this point), making a fire in the wood stove, closing all the doors upstairs besides our bedroom and Rye's so the heat would rise to those rooms, pulling out extra blankets and hats.
We managed to keep Rye's room at 70 until around 11pm (quite an accomplishment). Then we added more candles (yes they were safe). By 1pm it had dropped to 68 and at 3pm it had dropped to 64. At this point we decided to join forces and made a "bed" on Rye's floor where Trevor, the dogs and I all moved in and shut the door. The combined body heat (and for once, thankfully small room) got the temp back up to 68.
Unfortunately (as if the rest of this post wasn't unfortunate enough) we were running low on fire wood. Trevor figured that we had enough to last us until about 6am. So we stepped up the prayers a bit and hunkered down, so to speak. Wouldn't you know it, at 5:45am we woke up to the beautiful purrr of the heat pump and the glorious light shining brightly above us. Power!
By 6am we were crawling back into our bed (which of course is when Rye woke up again ;) and were so thankful that God took care of us.
Although we knew Rye's first sickness would be tough, we didn't think it would have the added "pleasures" of a candlelight dinner and family camp out. Guess that makes it all the more memorable, huh?
3 comments:
This sounds like Little house on the Prarie kind of issues!
Man that first fever they get is rough! Now we just through Ellen in a bucket of ice and hope the fever comes down! jusssst kidding! It's so hard to have your sweet little baby feel sick! And to lose your power at the same time! Way to make heat Briana
pretty impressive.
Love you little snuffilufagus
I think having a sick child is the WORST part of parenting...so sorry to hear Rye had his first bout...and quite the eventful one it was!
I can hear you re-telling him the story when he is older =)
Oh Briana that is a little scarey...no heat and a sick baby. It does make you realize that there is not much you wouldn't do for your precious child.
Good job Trevor, Briana and dogs keeping little Rye warm...a real family affair.
Post a Comment