Arjun's first earthquake and hurricane!

We survived the East Coast earthquake of 2011!

Arjun was happily playing on his activity mat, after we had finished nursing 10 minutes before. I was walking toward the kitchen when I felt the first rumble. I thought "uh oh, this is not good" and walked over to the window. I thought the construction crane across the street had finally crashed into our building. Seeing the crane in its normal position, I tried to rationalize the next rumbling as "oh, it must be a plane flying low, landing at the airport". Nope no planes in the sky either.

Then the big wave hit. The entire building shook from side to side. The pictures were starting to fall off the wall. I panicked, and was overcome with this great maternal instinct. I MUST PROTECT MY CHILD! I grabbed Arjun off the floor, grabbed my cell phone, put on some rinky dink chappals and ran for the door. My neighbor was running down the hall with her 2 kids, and I yelled "What's going on?!" She screamed at me "Earthquake! RUN!" and that was all the encouragement I needed. I hightailed it with Arjun down 5 flights of stairs. I remember his face as I clutched him in my arms - he was quite amused and was looking around all curious. We made it outside with the other residents and paced up and down the sidewalk, as the tremors were through. I was convinced that there would be aftershocks and there was no way I was going back in that building. Of course, cell phones were down and I could not reach Arun. I desperately typed a text message to him as my hands were shaking from all the adrenaline.

Eventually I calmed down. Arjun had no clue what was going on. After all the excitement, checking out the outdoors and the neighbors faces, his only reaction was to fall asleep on my shoulder. Most of the neighbors had gone back inside and I decided to take a chance. I went upstairs and put on something more respectable (better than my nursing shirt), put the stroller together, grabbed my rings and the passports, some snacks and my laptop. I spent the next 2 hours downstairs in the party room with Arjun, communicating with friends and family via facebook. If there was going to be another aftershock, I was ready to run. Heck I could run with that stroller all the way to the river if need be.

As I told my fellow Floridians, I would take a hurricane over an earthquake any day. Little did I know that wish would be granted by Saturday, as hurricane Irene brought pounding rain and wind to us. Knowing it was a Cat 1, I wasn't worried, but then again, infrastructure and services in the DC metro area are not designed to withstand hurricanes like they are in SoFla. Irene was a massive storm that moved relatively slowly, so we were buffeted with strong winds for almost 24 hours. We were too far inland to be greatly affected and in fact, never lost power OR direct TV. There was plenty of live coverage from the Old Town waterfront in Alexandria. Even my parents in India saw it on CNN. And the media seemed to be greatly disappointed that there was not major flooding. They even walked over to a puddle on the street and said "well, this is it."

How did Arjun do? Eh, he didn't know anything knew was going on. We stopped by the Farmer's Market that morning and he got rained on a bit. And later that day he rewarded us by showing us he could now lift his upper torso up while on his tummy. He started sleeping in his crib without fuss. And a couple days after that? He rolled over! So its been an exciting week for all of us :-)

Arjun's two month visit

Arjun turned 2 months on Thursday and has his 2 month wellness visit. He weighed in at a shade under 10 pounds at 9 lbs and 14 oz. He also got his first shots. He was all bubbly and happy when he got his first big needle. He was shocked at the sting...waited for a second and then started bawling, before his next big needle. But he has been a trooper and well on his road to recovery.