A couple of weeks ago I took my daughter clothes shopping. Staci, her mother and I went to get her some much needed summer clothes. It started out innocent enough, we looked at shorts, we looked at dresses and we looked at a few shirts as well. Then without warning it all went south. My wife decided that it was finally time, after years of her being my baby girl who I carried from the car to the house when she was sleeping, who I tucked into bed each night and who I still see as that 4-year-old who I helped dress in her uniform and take her to her very first day of pre-school, that it was time to get her a bra. Devastation, heartbreak, agony, sorrow, pain. These are but a few of the first feelings that I felt. I fought it. I tried to argue my point. I tried to plead my case. I tried to hide the bra. Ok I did hide the bra but I denied it all the way back to the store with my wife shooting daggers at me with her eyes. Here I am with a brand new baby boy and what I thought was my already baby girl. I was wrong. Time is passing and his birth I guess was a signal that she was no longer my baby but is a big sister. And as much as I am loath to admit it, big sisters need bras.
On the other side of the child coin my Aiden is doing well. What surprises me the most at this point is how much he has already developed a personality. It's been a month and he knows what he likes, he really knows what he doesn't like, he has comfortable positions (his stomach), he smiles, he fights (way more than he should) and he can communicate. He's a little man. Luckily we're getting a house because he's already used to his own digs so I don't know what he'd do if he had to share. I wonder sometimes if he's getting used to all the beeps and that go on in his room. Tanisha compares it to a casino with all the bells and dings and even a few dongs. When I was growing up I needed an air purifier next to my bed. It hummed, and to this day I sleep so much more comfortably with a fan on. I wonder if we're going to have to move to Vegas for him to sleep once he comes out of the hospital.
Today I tried to imagine him coming home from the hospital. I couldn't. Something was blocking me from that and I'm not sure what it was. I'm so used to him where he is now I had a hard time picturing him home. I have before. Usually when the thought comes up I have no problem seeing him without any wires or tubes sticking in and out of him, but today I couldn't. I guess it was just because I'm getting so used to the situation he's in at the moment. It's part of a coping mechanism. I'm not sure what you've heard, but time does NOT fly when your child is in the NICU. It drags. Considerably. So in order to cope with what's happening I have to limit my thoughts of the future because then I long for it more and it makes me impatient. I can't afford impatience. One of the first thing the doctors and nurses tell you is that it's going to take a lot of patience to get through this. So I guess because of that I was unable to picture him home.
What I CAN picture is what he's going to look like. Oh yeah, my son looks like ME. I didn't think he'd have much looks this early because I know he's got so much developing to do, but he has features and many of those features come from me. My wife is getting upset. She says she wanted at least something to come from her. I know he'll have some similar looks that he gets from her but right now he's not giving her much confidence. Not only does he look like me, he's already acting like me. I put my arm over my head sometimes (picture coming below). It's something I got from my father. Usually I do it when I'm sitting down relaxing, but as you'll see that's not the only time I do it. One of my wife's new things is to take pictures of me when I'm sleeping. With her pumping breast milk every 3 hours she has a hard time sleeping through the night, so when she sees a position she has taken to snapping pictures. Well one evening she snapped a picture of me she thought was funny. A couple of days later we took a picture of Aiden sleeping. If you look very closely you may see some resemblance:
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