Autumn of the Summer of Woody

Well, it's September now, meaning that the cool air is coming to Minnesota, and the heat waves that seemed to punctuate the dark days of the Summer of Woody are now a near statistical improbability here. This may not be true in Oklahoma, from where my dad and Sherri (have we settled on the title Mimi for her? I think so) just arrived for a visit. The Sooner State, where I grew up, is still plagued with hot air through September many years and sometimes into October, and that doesn't even count that generated by the football commentators as they ponder another scandal at OU featuring ill-gotten gains by star players and Big Red Sports Cars, which was mostly known back when I was growing up as the place you went to see foreign sports cars, and never seemed to actually sell many.

Woody's recovery over the last month has truly been impressive to watch. He just seems to get stronger every day, even as I brace myself for some kind of obstacle to get thrown in his way. Truth be told, his most challenging part of most days now is whether he's going to dislodge his nasal cannula. Maggie and I were in his room much of the afternoon, and while he was a little cranky, neither of us really thought that his fussiness had anything to do with an infection or wet lungs or anything, it started to feel a little ... normal, like that babies get cranky sometimes for nothing more serious than a case of constipation.

I find it harder and harder to justify the time needed to go out to the lounge and update the blog, even though I still want to point out his milestones and challenges if for no other reason than for my own records. He's just getting so interesting, as he looks around at things with his bright blue eyes and trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Part of the problem the last couple of days is that Woody has just not wanted to go to sleep at all. Apparently he stayed up all night last night. Maggie and I ran into a very weary Nurse C on our way into the hospital at 8 this morning, and she was remarking about how active he was all night long. So we expected him to be really sleepy all day today, but that just didn't happen at all either. While he's awake and interactive, it nearly kills us (especially Maggie) to leave him at all. We wonder how long until we can really bond with him, taking over all the cares necessary. And we feel a little guilty every time we leave the hospital to do something fun, because we know that if he was any other small child we wouldn't be doing that.

I can feel the challenges of the summer fading to some really repetitive and mundane ones: how long until we get to keep him? How long will this feeding issue take to resolve? Is the guilt we feel every night leaving him in the hospital worse than the imminent loss of our sleep, or the lack of chances to ever do anything social after he comes home? And can the Sooners overcome the loss of Rhett to conquer the Big XII, if not the nation?