With Love From Maine: August 2011

So I wanted to update this before today but we were without power thanks to Bryce’s first Hurricane/Tropical storm passing through. We survived 50 hours without power with a toddler due to Hurricane Irene. It made life interesting for sure and I hope we don’t have to go through it again – at least for a very very long time. It was an expensive couple of days with $20 or so spent on water (to flush, wash our hands, and wash ourselves up). With batteries and food too – it added up way too quickly.

We lost power at 3pm on Sunday August 28^th. Bryce was napping and woke up soon after the power went out since the wind and rain were loud. He played with a flash light and that entertained him for a bit. We had grilled pizza for dinner. We played card games and board games to pass the time while Bryce was sleeping (Phase 10, Skip-Bo, Life, and Scategories).

It was so hard to sleep since the house was so quiet. We had Bryce in our room for the night in the pack N play since all the trees are on the side of the house where his room is now. He woke up as soon as we went into the room and then was awake from 11:30pm-2:30am. He was just tossing and turning – not really making noise but neither of us slept. I gave him ibuprofen and he passed right out. He has 4 teeth coming in right now (canines) and they must have been bothering him. I felt awful for waiting so long to give him something, but he wasn’t crying or anything so I didn’t even think about his teeth.

Monday morning we went out to assess the damage since it was sunny and gorgeous out. It made being without power more difficult since it was so nice out – it was hard to tell a storm had just passed through based on the sun and 70 degree weather. There were leaves, branches, and other miscellaneous debris all over the roads and side of the roads. Our garden fence is destroyed – and I think our plants are destroyed too but we haven’t checked yet since it is disappointing. Our garden wasn’t doing too well before but that didn’t help things. We found a bird’s nest in our driveway – you can only hope that most of the animals found adequate shelter. The hornet’s nest that was hanging over the road a few houses down had fallen to the side of the road. It had grown to be huge over the past couple of weeks. We can only hope that they didn’t survive the storm.

As we drove into Windham we learned that over 200,000 people had lost power Sunday night. By Monday morning it was down to 170,000 people without power. It was comforting to know we weren’t the only ones without power. It was also disappointing to know there were so many people without power so it would probably be a while before it came back on. We saw 4 downed trees on our 15 minute drive into Windham. One of them was a rather large tree that had taken down some power lines with it on 302. They were also replacing a pole close to this downed tree. This was all within a few miles so we knew this wasn’t a good sign.

While we were at the store to pass some time we were told by someone living in Casco (the next town) that they heard to be prepared to be without power for 2-5 days. That wasn’t good news for us either! We headed back home, disappointed with all that we had learned. That afternoon we saw a couple of ambulances and fire trucks fly down our road so we thought maybe a line was down or something – but we never saw anything about it. The neighbors were kind enough to let us borrow their small generator to power our fridge and get it back down to temp. We got to use it again on Tuesday afternoon to do the same thing. We lost most of the milk products in our fridge but I haven’t gone through the fridge and freezer yet to completely evaluate. Hopefully we didn’t lose too much since our freezer is full right now.

Tuesday Jeremy had to go back to work so I drove him in for 1am on Tuesday. Then once Bryce and I woke up we headed over to Auntie Tracie and Uncle Chris’s so we could shower. It was amazing – and we owe them big time! We got to spend some time with her since she is on bed rest until baby Benny decides to make his appearance. Today is her due date so he can really come anytime – yay!

We picked up Jeremy from work and headed home to wait some more. Auntie Britty has been home for the past couple of weeks due to summer break. She had an interview yesterday so when she came home Bryce went to her room and said “where you at?”. It was so cute that he asked where she was.

At about 5pm I decided to grill some blueberry bagels for us and make some boxed Mac and Cheese for dinner (we were running out of options). As we were getting our plates ready – Britty screamed and pointed at the light above my head – we finally had power back! 50 hours later and it was back on. We were screaming and celebrating at that point! I started the dishwasher and did 4 loads of laundry. Then I cleaned the floors and vacuumed the rug since it really needed it. We also saw on the news that a couple in their mid-80’s died due to carbon monoxide poisoning from using a generator due to being without power. Thoughts and prayers to their families – what a horrible tragedy. It appears that they were up in the summer home in Raymond and it is a scary reminder of how careful you have to be with generators.

Today things are back to normal for the most part. Internet is down at this time– oy vey. Hopefully that is back soon. Today Auntie Britty went back to work for training. Bryce went to say hi to her this morning but she wasn’t in her room so I told her she had gone back to work. Ten minutes later he walked back by her room and he asked “She went back to wor?”. It was incredible that he remembered and then asked me if she went back to work. It still amazes me that he can spout off a string of “words” that I can’t even understand but then a few minutes later he says a clear sentence like that. He also said “more” for the first time today – without signing it.

Bryce has been good about getting back to trying the potty since we can actually keep up with it now that the power is back on. He tried 8 times on Saturday! Saturday he also started saying the word “sticker” – it sounds more like “ticker” but it’s adorable. But then the power went out so we didn’t really get to try since there were water bottles and too much he could get into in the bathroom. Plus he wasn’t as interested for some reason. I bought him a note card book so we can label the note card with the date and then put his stickers on it to keep track of it. He looks so proud when he is carrying around his stickers from trying and says “ticker ticker”. Hopefully he will stay interested and actually pee soon! Yay Brycer – we are so proud of you!

Here are some pictures from the storm and a video of the wind and rain.

Playing games in the dark -