Week 11 & Blizzard of 2013

This was quite a week for us, mostly because of the blizzard we got on Friday. The week started out not quite so exciting. Monday we didn't do much of anything. I think an outing to Trader Joe's was our big excitement for the day. On Tuesday my parents were finally home from their big trip, so they came over to see Caleb and I for lunch. Here is a great picture my mom took of Caleb and Grampy both happy to see each other again!

Wednesday we went to the office for lunch, which is our big social outing for the week. Here are a couple of pictures from the office.

 

 

On Thursday, Steve ended up being home with us all day, although we didn't see him much. He had scheduled a furnace cleaning and an upgrade to our Dish Network service in the morning. The Dish Network guy didn't come until after 11:00 and had to install a new dish on the garage and change a lot of other things, so he didn't leave until after 2:00, so Steve didn't think it was worth it to go into work that day. Steve gave Caleb a bottle Thursday evening for the first time in awhile and he took it, but he was fussy with it, so we are going to have to make sure we do more frequent bottles before I go back to work. It would stress me out so much if Caleb decided he didn't want to take a bottle for Steve or my mom. I think he'll be fine, though. If he's hungry enough, he'll take it!

 

So, Friday was the day of the big storm. We knew it was supposed to be bad, but we weren't sure what to expect. It started snowing early afternoon, but not bad. The Governor ordered a travel ban effective 4:00 pm on Friday, so Steve got out of work early. We were planning on going to my parents' house for supper on Friday night, so we ignored the ban and went anyway. Aunt Sherrie and Uncle Kevin were here for the weekend, so they and David and Yully decided to come and stay at my parents' house to ride out the storm. By the time we went home that night, the snow was pretty heavy and had started to really accumulate.

 

 

 

 



We lost our power around midnight on Friday night. Caleb woke up to eat around 4:30 and Steve started a fire in our wood stove to take the chill out of the house. We are lucky to have the wood stove, but it is a lot of work to keep going.

 

 

Everyone wanted to be close to the fire

 

 

Around 1:00, we ventured out to my parents' house for the rest of the day. They had lost their power as well, but they have a gas stove for heat and that works when the power is out, so their house was still toasty warm. Rad and Jen never lost their power, so they were very lucky.

 

 

 

Love this onesie given to us at the hospital

 

After it got dark, we went over to Rad and Jen's house for a little while and then went back home to tough out one more night with the wood stove. It ended up being a very long night for Steve. He was up every couple of hours to restock the stove and barely got any sleep, so when we got up Sunday morning, we decided if we didn't have our power back by Sunday night, we would not be spending another night in our house. Sunday morning we went back to my parents' house and Steve cooked breakfast for everyone on a camping burner, which he was really excited about. He felt like he was on a winter camping trip. He made scrambled eggs, hash browns, and little links. Everyone was very impressed!

 

 

Breakfast is served!

 

My parents had to go to Taunton for a funeral Sunday afternoon, so Caleb and I went over to Rad and Jen's house while Steve went out to Home Depot and Harbor Freight to gather more supplies. We watched a movie with Jen while Rad studied. Then we went out to Thai food with Rad and Jen to say thank you, because we were going to stay there that night. I kept checking the NSTAR website to see how the progress was going in getting power back to the town of Barnstable, but I wasn't very optimistic, because our neighbor had a power line down because a tree fell on it. Sunday night Steve went home to check on the fire and some of our neighbors had power but we still didn't, so we stayed with Rad and Jen. Monday morning Steve had to go to work, although he did go in late so he could build the fire again. I went over to my parents' house for the day, which ended up being a really good thing, because my mom kind of got to observe what I do with Caleb during the day, so she feels a little better prepared to babysit him now. Someone offered Steve a generator to use since they had their power back, so Steve actually left work to go get the generator and was going to hook it up, but he got home around noon and our power had just come back on!! I was so happy, because it was very frustrating having to go from place to place with Caleb. I should just be grateful that we had someplace else to go, but I was frustrated that we were without power for 60 hours!! Last night we slept in our warm house again, and I was very happy to be back to normal. Here are a couple of pictures from being at Grammy's house on Monday!

 

 

Grammy's first attempt at the swaddle - notice the fingers sticking out!

 

Such a big boy!!

 

A couple other things from this week. Caleb has been taking some short naps in his swing, which is nice. He has never really liked it that much.

 

 

Caleb has also still been sleeping well at night, so I think this is his new pattern! He actually slept the longest he ever slept on Saturday night when it was kind of cold in the house. He slept over 9 hours from 9:00 - 6:15. He must like the cold. We double swaddled him to make sure he was warm enough and he was fine (obviously).

 

Caleb also has found his fingers this week and is sucking them all the time, even when he's not hungry. He makes really loud noises and it is so cute! I think that's it from this week. Here are a few more pictures.