Project Muffinhead: The First Two Weeks at Home

(Yawn). We apologize to our faithful readers for the recent paucity of posts. It's like we've purchased a new alarm clock for which we have not yet read the instruction manual. We've got a.m. mixed up with p.m., when we hit the snooze alarm it just turns up the volume, and the classical music station has been replaced with white noise. In short, we've been bleary-eyed, somnambulant zombies for most of the past ten days.

But happy zombies, of course. Miles is a delight both asleep and awake, even if we find it hard to distinguish between the two states ourselves.


We've definitely got our hands full with this little fellow. Mom and Dad felt they showed considerable devotion in their twice daily visits to the NICU and ISCU, not to mention the psychological exhaustion the process entailed. But let's face it, that job wasn't exactly 24/7. And with a bevy of highly skilled nurses within a diaper's throw at all times, there was a wide margin for error. No more. Now Miles' safety and well-being must be our constant practice as well as preoccupation.


It came as no surprise that our lives as new parents are revolving in a very tight orbit around little Miles. But it is remarkable how much of the routine is centered on milk--and the extraction, storage, heating, administration, processing and disposal thereof, each step of which consumes more time than one would have thought possible, with each cycle flowing inexorably into the next.


Amidst this milky haze, the wonderment of having our boy home is still sinking in. We are still doing a double take every time we realize -- in the middle of giving Miles a bath or having dinner with him seated in a place of honor at the table -- that he really has come home from the hospital.


Last week, Miles paid his first visit to his pediatrician's office. For a boy of his age, of course, Miles has considerable experience with the medical profession, so he played it pretty cool. But he didn't have much experience with mirrors, which made the initial encounters with his own image pretty darn interesting:


-Dean

(In our next installment, an update on medical news and all the latest Project Muffinhead developments).