it’s eric’s and and kris’ birthday today! we all know eric turned 6 weeks old today, but i’ll leave it up to kris to decide whether or not to reveal her age. grandma and grandpa snowdeal came into town just to take us out to lunch; and we celebrated a quiet birthday in the evening with some of her family. it’s hard to put much mental energy into really celebrating outside the nicu, but that didn’t stop me from eating more than my fair shair of cake.

the nurses all knew it was kris’ birthday and decided to give her an extra special present by letting her wash him. as you can imagine, it’s a little difficult to give him a good scrubbing while trying to not extubate him, but kris did a great job.

eric is continuing to really pack on the weight. he weighed in at 1240 grams or just under 2 pounds 12 ounces. he looks a little puffy from water retension related to the intravenous drip, but i think a lot of his recent gains are real thing. amazingly, he just needs to gain 2 more ounces to have doubled his birth weight! over the past few days, nurses that haven’t seen him for a few days have been commenting how much different he’s been looking as he fills out and today was the first day that i really could see what they were talking about. ( as i’m writing this, a nurse walks by and exclaims, “ohmygosh! he’s big! oh my!” i swear that she doesn’t know what i’m writing at the same moment ).

during his bath, kris cleaned his hair and we both noticed that it was long enough to get “mussed” up and it stayed that way, as if it might be wavy. so august 15, 2004 was the first day and probably not the last day, if he’s anything like his pops, that eric’s hair was messy.

kris was also able to sneak in another brief bit of holding by picking him up while the nurse changed his bedding around. after a week of no holding or kangaroo care, these brief interactions which were made possible by an incredibly thoughtful nurse, made kris’ birthday quite special. all the nurses are great, but some of them are much more attentive and thoughtful and have not forgotten that any contact, however brief, is magical.

random observation, his fingers are getting bigger.