Powerless

With the first big gust of wind, we lost our power around 6 p.m. When I called the electric company, the recording said that the outage was affecting fewer than 20 customers and power would be restored by 8:00. The house got dark quickly, and after eating dinner by candlelight, we took candles and flashlights to the playroom. We decided to forgo giving Luke a bath and put him in his crib at 7;30. I called the electric company again for an update, but this time the recording had changed. While 1,400 homes were now being affected by the outage, the estimate for restoring power had moved to the next day. Concerned that the house was going to get very cold, we made a hurried decision to spend the night at the Radnor Hotel. Luke hadn't yet fallen asleep when we got him out of his crib and put him in a coat and in the car, and his eyes were open wide during the 15- to 20-minute ride to the hotel. We could only guess what he was thinking: "Where are we going, I wonder?"

As they did when we spent the night in a Connecticut hotel last summer on our way to Squam Lake, Bryn and Luke rejoiced in being at a hotel. They ran down the long corridor of rooms -- passed our room by at least 8 doors before I could reign them back in. Once in the room, the phone and TV remote provided for lots of entertainment, as did Bryn's climbing into Luke's pack-n-play in order to play peek-a-boo with him. It took a long while for Bryn and Luke to settle down, and despite not getting a nap, Bryn didn't fall asleep until 9:30, and Luke was up until 10!

Out of curiosity, Ken called our house around 10 pm, and sure enough, the answering machine picked up. We think, as Murphy's Law would have it, that power was restored sometime around 10, if not before then. Money spent on a night in a hotel didn't seem like a complete waste, though, on account of the delight that the adventure brought to B&L.