My little guy is tough, no doubt about it. The nurses are quite aware of any displeasure on his part.

He loves his mom.

He is still in ICU – my wife and I have been through all kinds of scares in the meantime. Essentially, he has trouble breathing because one side of his nose is completely blocked. They do not know if it is a bone blockage or soft tissue. Needless to say, soft tissue is easier to fix.

However, he also failed his hearing test and it was an entire day until we found out that the auditory nerve is fully developed and in place. Turns out his ear canals may not have developed correctly – we’ll know more later this week. In the meantime, we have entertained ourselves with some of the strangely odd things that get repeated to us by all the doctors.

Babies are natural nose-breathers.

We heard that said ten times yesterday while we were visiting with the neonatologist, two nurses, the ENT resident (and her friend) and our friendly neighborhood geneticist. I have a rolodex with all the folks we’ve seen, but they are all quite insistent that babies are natural nose-breathers.

Twenty-odd Jasper fans cannot be wrong.

I wish that he was home, I really hate hospitals and I have spent most of my time in one since last Thursday. I’m glad that we went out to a movie last night – we needed the break. Still, Jasper is at the hospital and hasn’t been home yet. It’s not so much that he will begin to think that the hospital is home that scares me – it’s the fact that it is beginning to feel like home to me. I barely recognize my house and if my mother-in-law wasn’t here, it would be filthy and unkempt. It’s hard to be robbed of taking him home when we left Sunday. It’s harder waiting for him to come home.

In the meantime, we pray. We don’t really pray that he will be a hearing child or that he will have ‘normal’ ears one day. We just pray that he can come home.

Anywho, there’s so much fun we’ve had to this point – I got to read to him and play with sock puppets. I think that most of his toys are really mine, but I have promised to share. Sharing his great toys is pretty tough, too. Oh well, I guess we’ll figure that out next week.