With the mother's milk secured in a remote location with power, we were free to drift into the electricity-free malaise of our first post-hurricane day. It was a Friday, and the federal government remained closed, after taking that extraordinary step the previous day. Metro had announced that, for fear of toppling buses and trains plummeting off bridges, it would suspend service on the first day of the hurricane, so the federal government, faced with the choice of stranding nearly 100,000 workers in the city without an effective means to return home, closed up shop. Congress headed home Thursday, and local government's were urging citizens to stay off the street by noon on that day.

At that very hour Isabel made landfall near the Hatteras light in North Carolina.

The eye passed within a hundred miles of DC by midnight that night. It had become a tropical depression, and it was fixing to depress us for the next several days.

Our electric hot water heater was a problem, we both knew, but we initially didn't seem to care. We tested the hot water at the tap, and it was clearly hot. We both bathed quickly jumping in and out of the shower one after the other while simultaneously monitoring the baby and shout-reporting the gradual ebbing of the water's warmth. The tank probably had a fifty-gallon capacity, and that water was rapidly cooling. We were draining what hot water remained.

We dressed and decided to eat. Thus began our post-hurricane tour of terrible chain restaurants whose service is abominable. Clean and hungry, we set out, a family refreshingly oblivious to their lack of electric light and hot bathing water. We hit the enterntaining and dining drag in our little corner of the world and the darkness is impressive. The side of the street with restaurants worth patronizing is shuttered. Emergency lighting and the odd exit sign are the only signs of life. Across the street, a Bertucci's beckons, though it turns out the wait is interminable and we bail. (We would eventually eat at Bertucci's the next night, where our orders are humorously conflated and our server insists on stopping by the table and incorrectly repeating our orders back to us, in an unsuccessful attempt to prove that she was somehow on top of the whole waiting tables thing.)

But tonight, we head out into the dark dark night seeking something not available in identical form from Maine to Tijuana. K has a strange meat craving, possibly related to Reid's relentless breastfeeding, and we head for a Brazilian churrascarria that featured bolo-clad men bringing spits of freshly cooked beef, pork, and chicken to your table until you ask them to stop.

The building is dark as pitch and locked up tight. Heading up South Arlington's main street towards the Virginia suburb of Annandale, it is like a moonscape. We round a corner and there is simply no light. I know a massive shopping center (with the area's only former Arby's now drive-through Starbucks, ew) is there in the darkness, but I can barely discern its vague shape. Passing that I feel as if I couldn't see my own hand in front of my face. Northern Virginia has disappeared in Isabel's wake, there but invisible without energy.

On Thursday night, the day that Washington stood still, at around 10:30 pm, the lights went out on our street. Simultaneously across our state, the power was laid low, and the winds blew hard all night long.

K is from a hurricane-prone state and she snorted at the merely category-2 hurricane that had trooped up the Potomac to greet us. She sneered at the prediction of 40 mile and hour sustained winds and heavy rains. Sitting in the dark, we later theorized that we were being singled out for punishment by a vengeful god who was mighty proud of his hurricane. This speculation took place at the darkest point in our extended trip to the 1870's.

But that night we broke out the candles and sat around wondering about how things were going to look the next morning. Our neighbors stood on the porch taking video images of impressively bent-over trees and whipping electrical wires, probably a little drunk, and seeming to have a nice time with the whole thing. I was less jovial. I've never been through a hurricane before, and would rather not go through one again. I'm a nice-weather kind of guy.

Reid, it turned out, didn't mind the hurricane, but he was a real trooper when it came to the lack of air conditioning, hot water and the incessant need to be moved from place to place over the five day blackout.

So inside with gentle flickering half-light of candles and a couple flashlights I didn't know I had, we prepared for our first night in the dark.

The next morning, I realized that our greatest resource was at grave risk. K had pumped and stored dozens of little bags of breast milk in our freezer. These would be the foundation for my month-long leave at home with Reid while K returned to work. Without this milk, K would have to go from being a casual mother breastfeeding her child to a full-blown dairy cow in production to catch us up on needed milk resources.

Charged with this knowledge, I went to the car and plugged my weakening cell phone into the lighter. Then I started calling friends to find out if they had power, and if they had room in the freezer.

And hour later, I had loaded all the milk into a cooler and was hot-footing it over to the home of an old friend and former neighbor, who had managed to dodge the storm's worst effects. On the way, I saw odd patterns of downed trees and damaged power lines. I saw an almost un-decodable grid of darkened homes, mixed in willy-nilly with places that seemed perfectly normal. Traffic lights flashed and customers without the ability to make their own coffee or toast their own bagels were queued up at the coffee-shop. But the longest week had only just begun.

Man. I'm prepping a series of fairly lengthy posts relating our experience (still ongoing) about life in total darkness. Since Hurricane Isabel took our power Thursday night, we've lived like Little House on the Prairie, though I don't remember them swearing horrible oaths against Dominion Virginia Power or sweating quite as much as we are. No matter.

So a blackout-blog-within-a-blog will commence once I can charge up the power on the home machine and get our high-speed internet running again. In the meantime, imagine me standing in the half-light in water I heated by boiling it, dousing myself with a two-cup measure my wife will never be permitted to use for food preparation ever again. Nice imagery, huh?

The flight back to Washington was the mirror image of the flight to Atlanta. I was more worried about security in Atlanta than I was in Washington, because of all the reasons an Arab guy might be worried about high-security situations in the American South, and because I make no bones about the fact that I fear southern justice, plain and simple. About the only thing that work's this time around is the amazing shield of impenetrability that Reid affords me. I enter the airport, breeze through security, navigate the concourses unscathed. Bless him.

Unlike in Washington, we are not, despite the obvious presence of our child, let to board early, as is customary. The whole boarding is screwed up by some Delta employee who simply didn't start boarding on time, forcing a far more competent-seeming Delta employee to have to come over and be folksy on the intercom to signal to us that they were doing their best to get us on the plane and off the ground right quick.

Eventually, everyone was boarded, and we were only running about 5 minutes late, when they announced that the doors were closed, but there was someone who had checked in and whose bags were on the plane, but who hadn't actually themselves made it onto the plane. The FAA now requires the ground crew to sift through all the bags and pull out that person's bag, for fear that they had smuggled something dangerous on board.

We all agreed in principle, but the act of removing the bag made us all want to identify the slacker out there in the Atlanta airport and give him a good talking to.

We eventually took off, but the timing had been badly affected by our delay. Reid was cranky, having spent a lot of his trip in an infant travel seat in the backseat of a truck, he was in no mood for long term confinement in the arms of either of us. He drank up his milk and demanded more, leading to K having to premiere her public breastfeeding skills right there on the plane. Plus, I got to learn the hard way that most planes don't have changing tables in the lavatories.

In fact, most planes don't have room to change a baby anywhere, let alone in the lavs. I am a big person, as you might guess. I also have an almost pathological desire to avoid using public restroom facilities, and as a result I have trained my body to go long periods of time without needing said facilities. I have also not been inside an airplane restroom in twenty years.

So, as we approach Washington, I am holding a baby and a diaper bag, heading to the back of the plane for a daring inflight change. K insists that there are changing tables in the lavs. I check one, then the other. No changing tables in sight. I decide this diaper is coming off, no matter what.

I build a little nest of leakproof baby-fabric, which is the most utilitarian product one can find, and I feather the nest with the handy-dandy little changing mat from the diaper bag. I pad the area with other baby-related linens, and I set to work.

Reid goes into the nest, and the diaper comes off. Perhaps it was the altitude, but this bad boy was NASTY. I have to admit, I was proud of myself, though, working entirely from the hallway outside of the restroom (because frankly, there was no way that me, this baby and a diaper bag were all fitting in that little room), getting the boy all sewn up in that diaper.

I will admit that I didn't know what to do with the dirty. The lavatory is bristling with dozens of little panels and slots, all marked with foreign-looking lavatory symbols, like hands grabbing bars and unicycles with wings. Seriously, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. I just tossed the diaper into the toilet, dropped the seat, hit the flush and ran.

I think the trip to Atlanta was something of a milestone for several reasons. Reid travelled in the back of a truck, something his dad barely did through his entire life. K's family are truck people. My people don't do trucks. I don't even know why that is, but nobody in our family ever even thought about buying a truck. I guess we had a different interpretation of the value of automobiles.

Anyhow, Reid rode from Atlanta through the chemical weapons incineration point at Anniston, Alabama, where he enjoyed a meal of breastmilk, and we ate at the Lone Star. Then we continued on to Northport, a suburb, I guess, of Tuscaloosa.

There, Reid met his great grandmother. For an infant, Reid's got a lot of great grandparents around. K and I are fortunate to have the wisdom of grandparents still around to share while our family expands. Reid already met my grandmother, Nana, whose real name is Shirley. On my side there is also a grandfather, Pap-Pap, whose real name is Mario. This is my mom's mom and her husband, whose been my grandfather since I was about 7, and is the only grandfather I've ever known, really. My father's parents have both passed away.

When I was very young, so young I don't remember, my grandmother, Mama Sania came to stay with us for a little while. This was my father's mother, who flew here from Cairo, Egypt. She spoke no English, and my mom spoke little or no Arabic, and my dad went to work. Who knows what went on in the house all day?

Anyhow, here in Alabama, Reid meets his great grandmother on his mom's side, Mary Francis, who will probably end up getting called Grandma. Grandma and a friend greet us, and we get situated in Northport.

The next day, Alabama plays in their home opener, and Reid wears his game-day socks, which feature the UA logo, and a little elephant. We drive in the truck all the way out to Winfield, Alabama, where we visit two more great grandparents, Granny and Gramps, Robert and Noval.

Reid performs excellently, charming the socks off of relatives, melting hearts and sleeping a surprising amount. When we return from Winfield, Alabama recovers from a disastrous first quarter and a rocky second quarter to wear out University of South Florida and give coach Mike Shula a win in his first game as a head coach. The gameday footwear is partially credited for the triumph.

More truck-driving as we head over to the Birmingham suburb of Leeds for a visit to K's namesake, her aunt Kathy. There, we have some burgers and watch some of a rebroadcast of the game. Reid is held by his great big great uncle Don, who is such a truck person that he drives a truck for a living. A big truck.

More time in the truck and we're back in Atlanta, where K's parents live. We stay in their house for a little while longer and then head back home. We missed a chance for Reid to meet his cousin Daniel, who we hope to catch up with next time. They are almost exactly a year apart.

When I was a baby, I think we went on trips like these that I don't remember. My mom's family was always in the town where we lived, and my dad's family was not quite as close but they were still pretty local. So the trips I don't remember were all vacations at the beach. We went to Hilton Head, SC when I was a kid, apparently, though I remember nothing. I seem to remember something about a trip to London when I was very small, which obviously I don't recall at all. But Reid, at 9 weeks, visited great grandparents like nobody's business. Nice work.

We flew to Atlanta. With the baby.

I'd been dreading it for so long that it actually turned out much better than I expecteed. I think I was most surprised by the very unrestrained nature of the child-flight. Babies Reid's age just get held in your arms, like a sack of potatoes. Flight attendants wander the cabin ensuring that the tray tables are up and the seat belts are fastened, and I'm told to put away any marginally bulky thing I have on my lap, but if I'm toting a miniature human, I just keep him tucked in my arms and that's that.

And the reality is that I'm a little concerned about flying, but not for the reasons anyone expects. I am concerned about being hauled off by Ashcroft's minions and tossed into a navy brig somewhere because I've got a funny name. I'm worried about being held back or taken aside while TSA agents scurry about making perfectly certain I'm not a terrorist. And while they do their little tap dance on my civil liberties, I freak out, and that's when things go bad.

So I tell myself over and over again that flying with the baby will be fine, that I won't freak out, that we'll be fine.

And we are. We performed a daring shuttle relay to get to the airport, wherein we all drove there, K, me, Reid, then Reid and K get out at the airport and I drive the car back to the house while simultaneously calling a taxi to meet me at the house and take me to the airport. This is because parking your car at National Airport is far more expensive than this cab-ride and the cab-ride we'll take when we get back. Everything from tickets to taxies to parking is more expensive at Reagan National Airport. It's like he's screwing us from beyond the filmy frontier of Alzheimers. Weird.

So we get checked in, and nobody ever blinks an eye at Arab-named yours truly. I am traveling with a baby. Reid is my shield of impenetrability. People see him and immediately want to discuss his age, his demeanor, his dimensions, his ability to travel, their first children, their first flights with babies, anything but my heritage and how it shouldn't be a topic of discussion at airports.

I never led Reid go. I carry him through check-in, I carry him through security, I hold him at the gate area while K uses the ladies room. I refuse to put him down. He is my security blanket, and I'm fearful of everyone, and proud like a man with a blue ribbon his chest.

Right down the jetway, right down the center of the plane, I've got this beautiful little carepackage and I don't care much about the expressions on the faces of all the people.

It's strange, because a year ago I was one of them, praying and hoping that the baby-people wouldn't end up next to me, sentencing me to a flight full of screaming, sobbing, and futile parental attempts at conciliation. Now I wear a new face: "This splendid little baby will do nothing to hurt you," my face says, "and, in fact, if you gaze upon his sleepy little face, you, too, will melt."

Reid was perfect, like a flour sack. He drank a bottle, he cooed and slept. The flight was effortless: we took off, landed and deplaned in two hours flat. The Atlanta airport was like a carnival ride for the boy. The stroller onto the moving sidewalk, then onto the high-speed underground, into the space-aged main terminal, and Reid was perfect.

Perhaps this whole flying thing isn't so bad after all.

I just realized that the picture featured below, of Reid mashing his cheek in with a grin on is especially funny because he appears to be in the arms of John Belushi, Cheech Marin, or possibly Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

But it's actually just his chubby daddy.

A lot has happened in the past couple weeks, and I'm sorry I haven't captured more of it in this blog, so we're going to try to over some things.

This jumble of pictures thrown together to create the illusion of organization tells much of the tale. Reid continues to host visitors and smile (spitup and pass gas) upon them. Reid took his first airplane ride, heading to Atlanta to visit his grandparents there and his great grandparents and others in Alabama. Reid has been growing tremendously, though he manages to maintain a smallish demeanor. He is probably 13 pounds. We realize now that we should have posed him week after week next to something static, like a newspaper page or a favorite toy. But things like that are so fleeting in our life right now. Everyday is something new and wonderful, a smile or a new sound, a surprising grab for a toy on a mobile, or a troubling new gastrointestinal response to some food his mom ate. He's big and getting bigger, he does great in restaurants and even on airplanes. He doesn't like it when K eats broccoli, and he's been to Georgia and Alabama.

How about you?