Back in the saddle

After a week of feeling like death warmed over, I finally was feeling well enough (and no more fever) yesterday that I was pretty convinced that I at least wasn't contagious anymore with my narsty flu I've been fighting. So I got to see him again in person after having missed Woody on Thursday and Saturday, and only peeking through the window Friday while dropping off milk. I felt so out of the loop, which I know sounds pretty funny to someone like Grammie, who hasn't seen him since he was about a week old.

Today I upped the ante by coming in this morning and actually holding him for a long time, which was great, especially because he was pretty stable and wasn't ringing the alarms much:



When he was first born, his skin was so fragile and his nervous system so undeveloped, that we were warned that even stroking him would set off a jangle of uncomfortable responses, and so not even to really touch him much, unless it was just laying a firm hand on him. Now, though, he really likes caresses and soft touches, and it was really fun to just hold him and lightly poke at various parts of him, like picking up his ear and seeing how pliable it is and whether it's getting any cartilage yet. Or playing with his hair, or having him grab on to my finger, or whatever. Every day that goes by he's more and more like a real baby.

I'm very conscious now of the fact that even though he was so premature that he was right on the line of what is even ethical to try to save, and even though he does have terrible lung problems, the complications he doesn't have are really impressive. He's been absolutely stellar in areas like digestion, which I know are really difficult for most kids to deal with that are that premature. And I know he's pretty smart too: his latest trick is that he's learned how to play possum, because he's learned that nurses are loath to bother him if he's asleep. Nurse J reported, and M₂ confirms, that he now will pretend to be asleep when he hears them lurking around ready to change his diaper and otherwise do "cares". Unfortunately for his wiley plots, his vision hasn't developed well enough to be able to see the nurse sneak up on the other side to see if he's actually awake and looking for the nurse to come back, because they keep seeing him abruptly close his eyes when they do come back to his field of vision.

Clever. I can tell he's going to be a handful.