Zane and the Ice Storm

You might have heard on the news that New England had another horrible ice storm. It’s the typical (i.e. crazy) winter pattern: snow all day and then it turns to rain/freezing sleet in the middle of the night. We woke at 2:30 Friday morning to the sound of losing power (whatever that is) and then to the sound of Zane screaming bloody murder. See, I’d put a small UPS (backup power) in his room and always meant to take it apart and disable the beeper. And, well, I didn’t do that and it turns out Zane is positively horrified of beeping in his room at 2:30am. I tried to calm him down but each time the beep went off (about ten seconds apart) he’d scream again. I finally had to set him down in his crib (didn’t go over well) and make a mad dash to uncover the UPS and force it off.

Back in my arms, sans beep, he fell asleep almost right away.

Zane’s room is electrically heated and the power didn’t come back on until around noon. Around 6:30 I checked on him when he started fussing and found the temp had dropped to 63 degrees. Tried to put a small blanket on him, but since blankets are only used for playing peek-a-boo it didn’t stay on much less keep him warm. Next came the bright idea of bringing him into bed with his heat generating parents. He’s never really slept with us either and after an obligatory ten seconds of laying there he started playing and exploring. Things really went downhill, at least our chances of additional sleep did, when he discovered the cat was on the bed!

Since the storm had devolved into rain and the roads looked more slush than ice we piled into the car and worked our sloppy, slushy way down from Daisy Hill Mountain in search of food. Zane and Faith dropped me off at work and headed over to Ft. Lou’s for a nice breakfast. The photos are from Saturday after everything completely and utterly froze, including all of the trees bent double from the heavy loads. What may look like snow on the ground is really the type of impenetrable ice normally found clogging miniscule freezer boxes in dorm room refrigerators. There’s a couple more photos here.

And, yes, Zane has gloves. Lots of them. I hadn’t put any on since the sleeves are so long and he normally has his hands lost somewhere inside. Of course for photos they are always sticking out, freezing.

p.s. I yanked the beeper out of the UPS!