When the lights go out. . .

Two quick stories that happened last night. . .

Story #1

My company recently switched insurance carriers. Because of this, the prenatal vitamins my wife has been taking more than doubled in price! So I spent an hour or so on the phone with the insurance company, not finding out why, but having them walk me through my problems with their 6 million different web sites. So I could type and talk I had the woman on speakerphone. By the time I was referred to an 800 number which referred me right back to the number I started with I was getting kind of angry. I was probably very short with the woman on the phone (which I apologized for, its not her fault). Point is, as I'm explaining the whole story to the woman Skippy Jr. was laying next to me smiling and laughing at me. . . little man though daddy acting mad was funny.

Story #2

It's no secret, I love bath time. Last night's was rough, I had a splitting headache which wasn't helped by the hour on the phone with UHC, and Skippy Jr. was sleepy all night so he wasn't very active in the tub. So we got him out dried him off and took him to his bedroom for dressing.

A note about bath time for non-parents. The walk to the bath and the walk back from the bath are what you might call "dangerous." During these times the child is naked. Not naked as in wearing a diaper, naked naked. This increases the risk of being peed or pooped on. Boys especially, when the air hit their junk, have a tendency to pee at will.

So I picked Skippy Jr. up out of his towel (mommy was holding him) placed him on the changing pad and--

The lights went out.

A quick panic washes over us. We have a baby laying uncovered ready to unload at any moment. How do you diaper a baby in the dark? Thankfully I realize that the nightlight/flashlight someone gave us for Christmas is charged and in the wall. "What do we do?" my wife asks. "Grab that flashlight," I order. She grabs it and we finish dressing him. We get as many flashlights and we can and seal ourselves off in our bedroom. We wrap Skippy Jr. up get ourselves dressed for a cold night and all three burrow into bed (somewhere in there I grabbed a cooler and piled all the frozen breast milk into it to put outside, it was 14º).

About an hour goes by, none of us can sleep we use the old nightlight from the bassinet for a nightlight. Skippy Jr. keeps looking back and forth between the two of us, confused by why we're trying to sleep with him. We are both scared to move much for fear of crushing of suffocating him, and then--

The lights come back on.

10 minutes later, Skippy Jr's asleep in his own bed, we're asleep in ours, all is right with the world. I sign knowing that we're able to handle at least a little crisis.