Friday Afternoon

This place is crazy – I have no idea how the staff here stays to upbeat and helpful, let alone sane. In the short/long time that we have been here, there have been at least three other kids put on the head cooling; meaning that despite our best intentions, devastation like we felt is a constant in the NICU. Of course there are amazing stories of recovery, and there are lots and lots of kids that come here for short periods of time and get better with the help of the doctors and nurses – but it’s an unfamiliar realization that this isn’t something that happens every blue moon, rather something that families are faced with on an all-to-regular basis.

Our last few days have featured a steady stream of emotion, some of which has been expected and some of which has been very unexpected. These moments of stark reminders of reality sneak up and scream their presence at the most unassuming of times. Ahna and I generally are able to cope with change fairly well – and are getting a lot better at it since Ezra appeared – but to deal with these changes as frequently as they come, as surprising as they are, and as impactful as they are is a new experience for us (resulting in a lot more gray hair. I’m sure that if you took before and after shots of us, they would look a lot like the before and after shots of the President). You could probably throw just about anything our way right now and we would be able to absorb it, but you change even the smallest thing with Liam in a way that wasn’t anticipated, and the world temporarily shifts.

We have been graced with a few visits from Ezra in the past two days, and today we were able to see in person for the first time his newest ‘face meets something it’s not supposed to’ marking. He and Nora were quietly and peacefully sitting in a chair down at my parent’s house when they tipped it over and fell into a cabinet. Nora walked away with no outward expression of the incident, while Ezra received a temporary tattoo of a scrape on his upper lip.