Full Thanks-ness
11/30/21, Tuesday, erin and Breen and the O2 machine
I love you.
Thank you for walking, jogging, drudging, lifting and carrying, coasting and braking with our family this year.
Sometimes I think I missed 2021, but 2021 didn’t miss me.
Breeny is sleeping in the front room. Nora is at Grandpa School. Jon is at ISU, and I miss the luxuriousness of the weekend in which he wasn’t working.
Jon offered Breen a bottle every couple hours all day Sunday, and the little buster hit a new record for meals taken by mouth! AMAZING progress!
We are still parked right around .5/.4 liters of oxygen. Last night, Breeny’s nose was stuffed up and I had to turn him up to 3/4 of a liter. But after (multiple anguishing tries at) suctioning, he was getting better saturations.
Thank you, lads who were asking: I started to wean off of pumping back when we were transported home to our Pocatello NICU. So I have been done with that since September-ish. Had to happen. We’re still able to give Breen milk because I froze so much when he was NPO and he also gets Ellecare.
We haven’t gotten a weight since our SLC visit, but I think his eyes are farther apart and surely his button nose grows. See?
We are trying to get the four Armstrongs to fit into one frame, but it’s proving mighty wiggly! Well… One of us is…
Thankful to be home. Thankful for the front line workers, the NICU workers, the everywhere caretakers. Thankful for friends and family and meals delivered and wonderful neighbors and home health help and gifts and thoughts, chants, prayers, intentions. To be safe. Great. Full.
Our hearts are with the families that are waiting for their discharge dates. Our hearts ache and pray for you.
Baby is awake now. Not much else to report! He laughs when I look over at him. So I just keep looking over at him, and then we both laugh. He has this effect on Nora too, but she likes to run toward him and crash to make him laugh. (If she knew it was as easy as eye contact, I’m sure she would still run and crash.)
Breen thinks everything is funny. I try to burp him on my shoulder, and he pushes himself up on both arms; he laughs hilariously when he notices how close my face is. We put someone on speaker phone; even if they’re complaining, he laughs. You jiggle his hips around to try to get a deeply buried burp out? He laughs.
Oh, he does NOT think nose suctioning is funny. Or dropping a pacifier. But he thinks most of his breathing treatments are funny. And diapers are funny.
And floors and chairs and tummy time and cribs and being tossed in the air and books and cats and carseats and toys and trees and dogs and talking and clothes and singing and deer and birds and strollers and LAWD, sisters are.
Sitting around with family? Funny. Sitting around by himself? Also funny.
He’s talking to the ceiling right now, so I’ll sign off with
Nora Poetry Corner:
On a stroller ride,
N: leans forward, gasps, “I see! I see!!”
Mom: scanning the horizon, roadsides, sky, “What do you see??”
N: “I see the babies with the angels!!!!”
FROM THE ARCHIVES (written down, then forgotten midsummer)
- Ring around the Rosy. Hoses! Posie! CRASH.
2. Improvises on a theme of Goodnight Moon:
In the great green City…two little cats and a pair of …socks… And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of SOUP MIX. I like Sue Mix! Goodnight, little toy house and good night squeaky mouse. Goodnight comb, and there is the fire! Good night bowl of soup mix! (chortles at her own wit.)
3. During dinner, severely: Come back here noodle, you have a time out in my mouth.
