Shake Rattle and Roll

Since being in Oklahoma, I have lived through quite a few new experiences. Iced over driveways, tornado scares, and daily wind gusts of over 20 mph. However, I never thought earthquakes would be added into the mix. And yes, that is plural, earthquakeS.

The night before last, Gavin woke up at 1:00 a.m. For the past couple of nights he has randomly woken up in the middle of the night. I do not know why and I pray that it stops soon! I have been unbelievably spoiled with my 12 hours straight sleeping child and I would like to continue being pampered. Alas, he has been waking up and I have been stumbling into his room, blindly changing a diaper and falling asleep while rocking him. However, this particular morning, he woke up around 1:00 a.m. and actually ended up falling back asleep himself. So I followed suit and was quickly back to snoozing. About an hour later, I was half woken up by the sound of what I thought was the overhead fan rattling. By the time I fully woke up, I did not hear anything. Chad said, very calmly, "Earthquake." I laid there and then said "What?" He said, "Eathquake. It was small." Well I thought he was talking in his sleep. Which is not an uncommon thing. So I laid there a few more minutes, nothing else happened and I went back to sleep. The next morning Danielle called asking if we were okay and she, all the way in Florida, informed us that it was in fact an earthquake. We had no clue! Chad thought he was dreaming and I thought I needed to get more sleep. So we laughed about the whole thing and went about our day.

So last night, after watching the LSU/Alabama game (boring!), we crawled into bed and were talking when all of a sudden I heard this rumbling. There is a train not too far from our house but this was way louder. "What was that?" I asked. Chad said "It's another earthquake." The rumbling got louder and all of a sudden, the light fixtures started rattling and our bed started to shake. It was AWFUL! In a millisecond, you feel totally helpless and completely small. The whole house was shaking and the ground was rumbling. It only lasted about 30 seconds and according to Chad "wasn't that bad.". However, I wanted to scramble out of bed, grab Gavin, get enough perishable food to last a week and jump in the bathtub and huddle under some pillows until the paramedics came to tell us it was all okay. But apparently that was going a little overboard. Of course Chad was calm and collected and explained it was nothing to be worried about and could I please take my fingernails out of his neck. To me it was horrible! I have never felt an earthquake before and I could not imagine a "bad" one. I laid awake for an hour thinking about how insignificant I am in this big world of ours. I rolled over to look at Gavin on the monitor and he was completely oblivious to the whole thing. He was still sound asleep and doing his usual random smile in his sleep. He was so precious and again, much braver than I was. So after being reminded by my son for the second time this week what a weenie I am, I told myself to get a grip and rolled over and went back to sleep.

We woke up this morning and found the house exactly as we had left it when we went to sleep. The earthquake was a 5.6 (a record for Oklahoma) and caused a few houses around the state to have some significant damage. We learned that when we eventually do purchase a house, we will be getting earthquake insurance because apparently this is not an uncommon occurrence. At church this morning, I sent up an extra prayer to God thanking Him for having confidence in me to be Gavin's mom. Sometimes I wonder about His faith in me. It is a good thing that Chad is here to help guide me in the right direction. Otherwise Gavin might be walking through life deathly afraid of shots, jumping at anything that moves and probably wearing a helmet twenty four seven. Yes, dear Lord, thank you for my husband. And thank you for allowing me the ability to recognize my ridiculousness, as it visits me quite often.

My sweet boys watching the Army game

Earthquake survivor