Tonight, Ledcat and I visited our nephew at Children's Hospital. He has pneumonia. He is 10 weeks old.
He looked good. He was cooing and wriggly and hungry and breathing well. His parents have been on a round robin for days now, juggling his needs with the care of their toddler. Tomorrow, we'll be with the toddler. She bit me on Saturday night. I've never seen anyone so surprised by the concept of time out, rather the concept that Aunt Sue actually knew about time out. Or that Aunt Sue's exothalmia gives her super human peripheral vision and thus she can snuff out any time out cheating without actually making eye contact with the misbehaving toddler. I rock. She did learn how to say exothalmia and now thinks I have superpowers. To be fair, she only eats for Aunt Ledcat. It takes a village.
Yesterday at work, I held a 2.5 lb baby who was born 5 weeks premature. She was so small, but feisty. She wrestled off a heart monitor and we had to have a little talk about making me look bad in front of the rest of the staff.
Such joy gives me great pause in the middle of a busy week. I am so grateful for the technologies of various sorts that makes each of three wee ones a few steps closer to healthy.
I have a busy day tomorrow and I think construction is going to make it worse. I'm going to try and recall seeing this beautiful little child in all his feisty glory as he battles for his health. I'm going to revel in the little glow I feel when someone refers to us as "the Aunties."
And I'm going to walk through the day with bit more gratitude than I did today.