State of Emergency?

or just another Monday?

Hurricane Sandy has arrived. And as a result, schools have closed, streets have flooded and hundreds of thousands are already without power.

According to the nonstop news coverage, our region, state and county have all declared a State of Emergency.

I asked MC for his take on the storm and he just gave me his infamous one eyebrow raise in response as if you to say, Seriously, mom? I did monsoon season in India. You call this a storm?

And he's right. Far more concerning is that the 9th Floor coffee machine is broken and a majority of the hospital coffee shops are closed-- because apparently, there is grave danger in serving coffee at a coffee shop during a hurricane.

So aside from that State of Emergency, we are, as our very much missed British mates would say, keeping calm and carrying on.

Carrying on, that is, with our plans to take MC home this week. 

I'll admit, it does seem fitting that MC would select a homecoming week during which all government offices have shut down, home health care agencies are grossly understaffed and it's anticipated that hundreds of thousands of homes will be without power for extended periods of time.

But if it hasn't become apparent already, we do not do average in this family. 

I mean, really, where's the challenge in bringing home a healthy newborn from your local hospital after an uneventful 9 months? Nope. We much prefer to do solo out of  country preterm births followed by 7 month old homecomings requiring more equipment than an L.A. gym.

So in anticipation of this really special event, we spent the afternoon gettin' personal with our at home feeding pumps, pulse oxmiters and oxygen canisters-- and how to run them should we find ourselves without power-- as well as coming up with good day seizure drug plans, bad day seizure drug plans, I-haven't-a-clue-whether-it's-a-good-day-or-a-bad-day seizure drug plans, and of course, plans for deciding who will get to call the coin toss when making these very big decisions.

Because with a son like MC, sometimes a coin toss is the best you can do. He's a complicated kid with extremely complicated diagnos(es) which means that upon his arrival we'll be using an armory of medicines and equipment "on a trial and error basis"-- trust me it's as scary as it sounds-- in our mini ICU formerly known as H-O-M-E. 

 Nevertheless, we could not be anymore excited!!! Did I mention that we are finally, after 4 long years followed by 7 plus months, bringing the final piece of our family H-O-M-E?!?!

As our ever-increasingly annoying newscasters would say, stay tuned for upcoming coverage of this incredibly historic event.