I know it must be almost May because...

I've started making nasty comments about women and their cute little take home babies.*

I keep pulling out all the NICU pictures and:

1. falling in love all over again
2. marveling that the OG tube was so close to the size of his fingers and the leads covered almost his whole chest
3. crying

I alternate between telling myself that it wasn't that bad/was worth it and wondering what I did to deserve the hell that we've been through.

Has it really been almost three years?

* To all of my friends who have recently had full term babies or are planning on it in the next month I promise to be happy for you starting sometime in June.

Pretty in Pink

If you take you son with GERD with you to babysit your friend's two daughters and it's his first night with a new form of one of his reflux medications, neglecting to bring a second pair of PJs is a bad idea.

But if you do forget to bring a second pair of PJs make sure you get pictures of him wearing the pink rocking horse PJs that you had to borrow from your friend. It'll be even funnier later than it is now.

P.S. Here's a more manly image to even things out.

Spring is here and we've been busy. Visits from 2 grandmas, a grandpa and an uncle and spending time with his favorite great-grandma has kept Noah quite occupied. Here are some other recent Noah activities...

1. Stealing Daddy's socks: No laundry is safe if Noah is around.

2. Checking out his shadow: I think the groundhog was right!

3. Composing: It's easier to push more than one key if you use your feet.

4. Visiting our favorite emu.

5. Licking statues: He won't put food in his mouth, but has no problem with a statue that has been touched by hundreds of people. Maybe I should put food on the statues - that would keep him from licking them!

No wonder I've been too busy to blog!

We're not dead...

Just really busy! Noah's grandparents and uncle came to visit from NY, and now Noah's other grandma is here visiting from MA. After Tuesday life should start to go back to normal...

Easter Pictures

Last year there were no Easter pictures. The year before last there was a picture of Noah in his baby carrier covered in burp cloths. The Easter outfit made it to church but no pictures exist. This year I was determined to get pictures - and I did. Noah didn't exactly cooperate, though.

The black eye didn't help, nor did the fact that we got him up at 6 am to go to the sunrise service at church (daddy had to sing). At least there are pictures this year, though. Maybe next year my goal can be good pictures.

Church Nursery

The nursery workers felt really bad.

I told them it wasn't their fault that it happened.

He just ran into a door.

He does that a lot when he's not at home.

They say the white cane will help.

But I'm not sure how that would work in church nursery.

Community Support

This weekend I was reading through a packet of information from "The Virginia Project for Children and Youth with Dual Sensory Impairments/Deaf-Blindness". They were talking about how it's important to have community support and how isolating yourself is the worst possible thing you could do for a kid who's already dual-sensory impaired. I totally agree with this and we try really hard to do a ton of stuff with Noah. Sometimes, though, I think I try to do too much myself. I want Noah to interact with the people and things around him, but only on my terms. I don't want him to feel rejected, but I also don't want him to miss out on experiences just because I'm not willing to take a risk.

I resolved to give other people more of a chance, and my opportunity came today. I was at a VBS planning meeting at church and when the director asked if there were any more questions I asked what we were doing to make sure that the special needs kids at our church were being included in VBS to the fullest extent. We had a nice discussion about ways we could include them and I'm happy to report that Noah will be participating almost fully in VBS this year. He will have a full time aid (a high school student) who will make sure that he doesn't walk into any walls and will repeat directions so that he can hear them even though the environment will be noisy. The only thing he won't be participating in is snacktime, but the aid will bring him to me so that he won't starve. I'm really excited for this because I think it will benefit not only Noah but also the other special needs kids in our church. People were so willing to help and all agreed that of course we needed to do whatever we could to make sure Noah was included. I knew there was a reason why I loved my church so much!