Why I Won't Be Posting Today

Our power went out. St. Louis is, according to one news source, "paralyzed" by the recent winter storm. We drove in to Tom's lab at the university without much trouble, and now we're camped out there for the day. We brought food, DVDs, reading material, a pack and play, and even an air mattress. I hope the electricity comes on by the evening. At the moment, Ben is not napping--he prefers to bounce around the pack and play and try my patience.

Ben woke up in the middle of the night when his night light went out. I was already lying awake--I realized the white noise machine had fallen silent, which meant the power had gone out, so I was trying to figure out what we would do in the morning. Once Ben was awake, mindful of the cold, we did something we'd never done before: brought him into our bed in hopes of lulling him back to sleep. Instead, that kid was downright chatty. He had a lot on his mind: "The night light is out. What about the bathroom? Did the bathroom lights go out? The TV room lights went out. I want to watch TV. Is the TV broken? Is the man in the TV broken? Elmo is broken! I want to eat! Mama, you want to get up?" Once he finally fell asleep, he snored loudly.

The power outages this summer--which didn't affect us--taught us not to expect the problem to be fixed immediately, so we knew we needed to go somewhere before the house got really cold. We're fortunate to have a warm place to go. As I was packing a suitcase of clothes and toys, I thought what a horrible pioneer I would have made.