Dispatches from the Crib...

From: Erin Murray
Subject: What a night!
Date: Saturday, February 2, 2002

Last night the power went out at 11:30 pm just as I was going to sleep. It was very windy, and we had some ice on the power lines, so something probably fell down. I woke up at 2:30 am because I was cold and hungry. Mommy came to get me, fed me, and decided that I should go back to sleep with Mommy and Daddy in their bed to stay warm. At 3:30 am the backup battery in the carbon monoxide detector started chirping, so Daddy had to get up and mess with it. About 4:30 am the cat had a hairball. At 5 am I woke up again and ate, and at 5:30 Daddy had to get up to feed Hickory. At 6:30 am the power finally came back on. It was only down to 65 degrees in our house after having no heat for 7 hours in the middle of winter. Mommy and Daddy were pretty happy about that. We all finally woke up this morning at 9 am. It was a rough night. I really enjoyed cuddling with Mommy and Daddy in their bed last night -- maybe they will let me do it again some time soon.

Last weekend I got to meet a whole group of people. Do you know what 'cousins' are? I have lots and I got to meet two of them! I liked playing with Stephen and Daniel, and we got to do all sorts of things while they were here. One afternoon we went to a park that had some animals, and I had my picture taken with a burro. It was sticking its head over the fence and snorting at my Mommy. After we saw the animals, Uncle Paul, Aunt Melodie, Stephen, Daniel, Mommy, and I all went for a walk in the woods. It was a nice warm day. We also went to the dinosaur museum and the air museum, and I sat through most of matinee of Beauty and the Beast on Aunt Melodie's lap.

Know what we had in our back yard last week? A FOX! Mommy saw it and called Daddy to come look out the window. I was just waking up, so I missed it. It trotted across the back yard and jumped off the end of the lower deck into the woods.

Daddy put up more pictures on my website. You can find them at

http://www.pandc.org/erin/

Love,
Erin

P.S.: Just as Daddy was getting ready to send this out, I figured out how to laugh! What a funny feeling! It was so neat that I did it twice.