Long Days…

Hudson is now 3days 5hrs old as I write and the days are long. I’m finding that this is a lot more work than I expected. Every morning Hayden likes to wake up at 730am MDT (I guess he’s adjusted somewhat) and tell everyone it’s morning. Drawing the curtains and letting the sun shine brightly in. Yes, the weather has been pretty awesome here so far and today it was actually around 24 degrees (75 degrees for our American friends) today but it felt hotter than that. We all get up and Hayden and I have started the morning routine of going to pick up my mom about 15 minutes away. Gabby’s mom is also with us and when we get back and all have something to eat together, Gabby and I then go to the University of Alberta (Stollery Childrens Hospital) which is only about 5-7 minutes away. The walk from the parking lot to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is another good 10 minute walk. We get the updates from the nurses and try to hold Hudson or caress his head for about 4 hours. Afterward, we head back to the Ronald McDonald House to relieve the grandma’s from the kids around 2’ish hoping the kids go to sleep except they seem to be losing their nap now. Every once in a while they will nap but it’s not the norm. Today, I played with Hayden in the playyard out back of the House and it was quite hot out. Hayden wanted to play frisbee so I pulled out one of the lawn chairs and played fetch with him instead haha! I showed him how to play on the monkey bars and climb the rope ladder and he catches on quickly. He had a lot of fun but the sun was making me quite sleepy. Hayden wanted to keep playing but I really needed a nap (sitting in the lawn chair is hard work!). Hayden and I went up to the room and tried to nap, but after 5minutes of him being extremely restless, he gets up and says, “I’m done napping daddy… Let’s go play frisbee”… After much debate, I haul myself up after my 5minute no-nap and we go play frisbee once again. Shortly after, we took the kids and grandmas to go see Hudson. Not the best idea since there wasn’t a nap today…. You should have seen how cranky the kids were though! hah! So we hung around until around 830pm and the kids and grandma’s got to visit Hudson. After that, Hayden and I finish up the night by going to drop grandma off at her friends and drive back along the train tracks that he loves to see. By the time the kids are all cleaned up and teeth brushed etc… It’s about 930 already and it’s the waiting-for-the-kids-to-fall-asleep game. Sometimes they fall asleep quickly which is nice, but sometimes they are stubborn and fight it hard…. Tonight was a half decent night, they fell asleep pretty quickly. 🙂

Maybe tomorrow I’ll talk more about Hudson and give an update on him, but he’s doing extremely well. He’s a little jaundice but that’s normal for infants after a couple days (I think this is usually due to the breakdown of red blood cells happening faster than his liver can process). They just need to make sure he’s not jaundice for the wrong reasons (problems with liver)

The long nights after the kids go to sleep and Gabby and I catching up on regular things at the end of the day, we are up between 11pm and 2am at times…. Then our little alarm clock starts things over again 🙂 I think these days are going to be the easy days… it’s the days after the operation and post-operative care that’s going to add to the “busy-ness”. Till the next update!