thankfully, eric’s alarms stopped alarming and everyone feels quite confident that the whole hullaballoo was just eric’s way of saying that he needed a little more help breathing that we thought. without the constant alarms, we were able to enjoy a relatively quiet 8 week birthday. eric’s friends all gathered around to wish him a very happy birthday. after eric was finished socializing, i had the chance to give him his very first “spit bath”! it took me a little longer than kris takes when she gives him a bath, but we eventually made it through the process relatively unscathed.

kris will claim that she doesn’t know how to take nice photos, but i think this series proves that she’s fibbing.

there’s a diaper under his head to help prevent water from soaking his bed. the nurses never put a diaper under his head when kris gave him a bath, so i believe they’re really thinking that i don’t know what i’m doing 🙂

he’s trying to subtly let me know that i should hurry it up so he can get back to sleeping.

one simply must have a sqeaky clean forehead on one’s second lunar birthday.

as i’m trying to give him a bath, he grabs my finger very tightly and won’t let me pull it away as he looks right at me as if to say, “enough, already!”

he keeps looking right at me as i clean the folds in his neck, as i think about how amazing that he actually has folds of skin on his neck, given how skinny he was just a few weeks ago.

you don’t want to leave any soap on a micropreemie’s head, so it’s mighty important to give him a good rinse.

it’s that easy to scrub his back with the intravenous lines and nasal cannula, but we make the best of the situation.

his head is drying under the towel as i’m scrubbing his legs and feet.

i’m picking him up as kris is changing his bedding and simultanously trying to take a picture. he’s a little bigger than the last time i held him like this on day 8 ( she took that picture too ).

kris and i have switched roles and now i’ve got the camera. he’s looking up at her as she’s telling him what a super job he did enduring my bath, which was twice as long as the those that she gives him.

she’s getting ready to put a “big boy” top on him to help keep him warm after the bath.

all done! baths are quite tiring, he almost immediately falls asleep and enjoys a lunar birthday nap.

clinically speaking, eric is doing very, very well, which is amusing to say considering all the alarms just yesterday. he’s tolerating his feeds as well as anyone could expect and the amount of undigested material that they are pulling out of his stomach between feeds is gradually diminishing. i think that it might be possible for him to be back on full feeds by the end of the week. he’s looking a little pallid due to a gradually decreasing number of red blood cells. so, despite the hope that he might have recently had his last transfusion, it looks like he might get one ot two more.

i haven’t been giving any updates on his weight because he hasn’t been adding on any weight. i discovered that being on the vent is a great way to add weight to a micropreemie, since it’s doing all the work and they can convert the extra energy towards gaining weight. since eric’s not on the vent, it’s not unusual for him to stop adding weight as quickly as he had been; however, i think they’ll look at adjusting his diet a bit in the coming days, since it’s not a good thing to not put on any weight for five whole days.

we always know that odin’s lunar birthday is approaching because it coincides with the full moon. well, technically, it’s a day after the full moon, but it looks full enough to me. i realized tonight that i hadn’t bothered to capture a photograph of the moon 4 weeks ago, and i couldn’t let it happen again.

it’s seemed like a big, bright birthday candle in sky as we took the dogs for their nightly walk.