What's it like outside?

Semi-tired and way behind on catching you up if you're out there.  We made it through the first weekend.  Overall it was ok.  We didn't exactly leave too much, but we survived.  William was extremely accommodating really.  He's currently eating every 4 hours and pretty much sleeping in between.  Despite mostly tiptoeing around (aside from Thomas singing at the top of his lungs), William is a very sound sleeper.  Its one of the benefits of spending your formative weeks in the NICU, its not a quiet environment really.  Lots of movement, lights and sounds, so William is pretty oblivious overall.  The first couple days, we kind of divided and conquered.  I took Thomas who is a Tasmanian Devil while awake, but sleeps through the night and Rebecca took most of the feedings and tried as best she could to get naps in when William slept.  Worked out relatively well in that we were both exhausted.

All that being said, we're still on pins and needles anytime he makes a weird noise, or doesn't make any noise at all.  Its kind of funny that noise is bad and no noise is worse.  All my old worries come back to me.  I get paranoid holding him and walking, that I might somehow misjudge a doorway and accidentally bang his head or something (which has not happened with him or Thomas yet). 

Today was a big day for both Thomas and William.  We'll start with Thomas (it is his blog I suppose).  Rebecca's mom has graciously come into town to help spell us and let me travel a little for work.  She and I took Thomas to his new school (which if you recall I spent the night at to get him in.  You can see that story in the archives back in February) to meet his new teacher and check things out before he starts next week.  Its a big deal because Thomas is still playing catch up.  He doesn't get near enough opportunity to be around other kids and the joy that he gets being around them is infectious and to me, a little sad.  I say that because he is so excited when he gets to be around other kids (especially girls) that he can almost be a little intimidating.  He just wants to be friends and have a good time with any and everyone and I cringe that some child isn't going to reciprocate his friendship.  Fortunately for Thomas, nothing fazes him like it does dad and he just stays happy as can be.  I think school is going to be really good for him, but I will be very sad when he loses his innocence.  I need to not dwell on that, but you know, I'm a parent, so its kind of like impossible.  Thomas really seemed to like the school and the teacher, so I think things are going to work out well.

Now about William's big day.  As you probably know Rebecca and I are huge Star Wars fans and of course the convention is coming and with Thomas' hair cut he naturally lends well to a luke skywalker look, but what to do with William?  We've got two ideas and we're at a loss for which direction to go.  We went to a make up artist that specializes in these sort of things to give us a base layer that would keep our options open.  In the first pic, you can see William with the special implants.  So we're either going to go with pic 2, which of course everyone recognises as Lobot, Lando Calrissian's assistant in the Empire Strikes Back, or we could go for tried and true and go Princess Leia.  Thoughts?  He's got the scowl pretty much nailed I think. 

 

 

 

So, maybe that's not exactly our intention.  At the same time as my visit to the school, Rebecca took William to his first doctor's appointment outside of the NICU. This one was to a specialist.  William has a floppy ear, which is awesome if you're a dog, but in the long run, probably not a great look for a boy/man.  William's cartilage in both ears is underdeveloped (side effect of early birth).  So typically at some point William would have to undergo surgery to repair his ears.  There is another option that's relatively new, William was fitted with molds basically to help shape his ears correctly.  He'll have to wear them for about 6 weeks, but this is ultimately more preferable to surgery.  He's not in pain and was asleep relatively quickly when he got home.  You hate having to do these things and making these sort of decisions.  One day Thomas and William may read back on this blog and be shocked by all the crap they had to go through, but hopefully this will make William just that much more attractive down the road.  Unless of course William takes up wrestling and develops cauliflower ear and then it'll be all for not.