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Updated 10:54 a.m.

Good morning on this cloudy Wednesday.

Two years ago today, Rachel Murphy was about to go into labor with her son.

And Hurricane Sandy was swirling toward the city.

By the time her son, Sparrow, was born, the storm surge had submerged her Red Hook apartment.

“We lost everything,” she said.

But Sparrow Essed will celebrate his second birthday on Friday.

We asked our readers to reflect on the lessons of Hurricane Sandy two years later. Seventy-seven responded.

Ms. Murphy’s insights ranged from the practical (“Water rises fast”) to the philosophical.

“I continue to discover things we don’t own anymore, and I add them to the list I started almost two years ago,” she wrote.

“It’s not an exercise in grief, or a wish list. It’s a sort of corny reminder to myself that we can live without everything I assume we need.”

Many of those who wrote to us said the same thing.

They also spoke of how the storm had fortified their family bonds.

And the frustration of navigating government agencies to rebuild.

A lot has happened in the last two years, and one can forget how Hurricane Sandy completely transformed the lives of thousands of New Yorkers.

You may share what you learned from the storm in the comments or through Twitter with #nytoday.

Here’s what else you need to know. Read more…

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Updated 10:58 a.m.

Good morning on this fine Tuesday.

The week began on a frightening note as a 5-year-old boy from the Bronx was tested for Ebola at Bellevue Hospital Center on Monday.

When a blood test came back negative in the evening, there was a collective sense of relief.

“Good news!” the Bronx borough president, Rubén Díaz Jr., wrote on Twitter.

This was the latest test case for how city residents might respond to the threat of the virus.

The Times reporter Vivian Yee described the scene for us around East 172nd Street in Soundview.

As the news spread, and city workers arrived with pamphlets on Ebola, she said, “There was a sense of real dismay.”

Despite the city’s message since last week — that the virus is hard to contract — there was fear.

“As the day went on,” Ms. Yee said, “you saw some younger men — possibly it was a joke — riding through wearing face masks.”

(There were reports that children in the Bronx were bullied because of Ebola on Monday, and two boys from Senegal were reportedly injured in an attack.)

Later, mothers arrived at the school where it was believed the boy was enrolled in kindergarten to pick up their children early, even though it seemed the boy had not been in school in recent days.

A neighbor said the boy’s family had been in Guinea for about two weeks. He said the mother was a hairdresser and the father was a driver.

The parents of the schoolchildren “were not waiting for the results of the test,” Ms. Yee said.

The school did not tell parents if the boy who was hospitalized was a student there, but “a couple of the little kids said they had made a get-well card because they were told he was in the hospital,” Ms. Yee said.

They did not know why.

Here’s what else is happening. Read more…

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Updated 10:50 a.m.

Good morning on this crisp Monday.

Ebola continues to dominate the news this morning.

A 5-year-old boy who recently returned from Guinea is being tested at Bellevue Hospital Center after developing symptoms consistent with the disease, city officials said.

And the nurse quarantined in New Jersey will be released from the hospital to complete her quarantine at home in Maine.

In the case of the boy, blood test results should be known by early afternoon, said Mary T. Bassett, the city’s health commissioner.

He was taken to Bellevue on Sunday and developed a fever while there, around 7 a.m. today, the city said.

Ram Raju, head of the city’s public hospitals, said that the authorities are still putting together a contact history for the boy.

The New York Post reported that five members of his family are quarantined in their apartment in the Bronx.

The nurse in New Jersey, Kaci Hickox, who was quarantined in a tent behind a Newark hospital on Friday after returning from Sierra Leone, will be released today pending federal approval, our colleagues Michael Barbaro and Marc Santora report this morning.

Ms. Hickox, who has tested negative for Ebola, became the voice of opposition to mandatory quarantine after she criticized her treatment as “inhumane.”

In other Ebola developments:

• On Sunday, the governors of New York and New Jersey, under pressure from President Obama and medical experts, eased restrictions on travelers returning from West Africa.

Both governors announced that people, including medical workers, who have had contact with Ebola patients but are asymptomatic could be quarantined at home, not at hospitals.

• Craig Spencer, the doctor being treated for Ebola at Bellevue, remains in serious but stable condition.

His condition worsened over the weekend but had improved by Sunday.

Here’s what else you need to know. Read more…