Oh what a difference a good night’s sleep makes. Patrick slept 10 hours last night. Which means I got a good 8 hours with only my routine fill-the-feeding-bag interruptions. We all felt so much better.
We’d have slept longer, but today was lab day. That’s ok. We needed to get up and get moving to fit in all we hoped to do.
One of our favorite Christmas traditions since before we had kids is to visit the zoo on Christmas Eve. People don’t think of the zoo on this day. They have other things to do. Therefore, it’s quiet and uncrowded. You can take all the time you want. Animals behave differently when it’s a little cold, too.. so you get to see a different side of the exhibits in many cases.
And guess what? Omaha is home to one of the world’s best zoos: the Henry Doorly Zoo. And so of course, as soon as we finished the morning meds and formula mixing (complete with me forgetting to vent my bottle after shaking it so the baking soda made it explode all over the kitchen) we headed off the zoo.
Well, with a stop at Taco Bell for breakfast. Patrick willingly took bites of an entire hash brown this morning. That is a HUGE deal.
Anyway – we got to the zoo and discovered it was bitter cold. Thank goodness this zoo was also designed by people who live here in Nebraska where the humidity makes all weather feel extreme. Most of the exhibits are indoors. So we hurried into the Lied Jungle where we warmed up in a rainforest climate. Patrick had a great time running around here and elsewhere in the zoo.. but he would get tired and try to get us to carry him and then we were grateful for his stroller/wheelchair. He’s still got a ways to go recovering.
We had a lot of fun this morning. There are lots of babies at the zoo right now and we got to get up close views of several of them. Patrick and Brian had a great time playing with one of the gorillas. We saw an extremely rare white lion cub. And then, we were tired. So we headed out… but not before acting on the idea to turn one of the very generous cash gifts we received this week into a membership to the zoo so Patrick can come back as often as he wants while we are here. The zoo in off-peak hours is an approved immune-suppressed activity.
Anyway – after the zoo we came back for lunch and some quiet time in the room. Then Brian and Patrick started some laundry while I went to the store for a few last-minute things. (Including stocking stuffers. I opted not to get stockings after some filled ones showed up in a package from DDM. But then Patrick got another stocking from a friend that he was allowed to have early. He told me yesterday Santa was going to fill it back up again… On a sidenote, I’m glad Patrick knows now what stockings are for as the first few times he saw them, he asked if he could wear them.) Then, Brian took Patrick off for a walk to let me wrap the last couple of presents in the room.
Dinner tonight was catered pasta. An amazing family took the time off this evening to arrange that on a night that Ronald McDonald House doesn’t always see people willing to give up the time to provide us a meal.
We spent the evening working on crafts with the rest of the house. Wendy and Kate went all-out with clay ornaments and ice-cream-cone Christmas trees tonight. It was a lot of fun to see everyone’s families arriving tonight to spend the holiday with them. The mood of the house was pretty light and happy today.
Patrick, for the first time I can remember, is genuinely excited for Santa to come. He just kept showing me that only the white ring was left on his advent chain. And then he’d skip and run down the halls.
We followed some other traditions tonight: opened Christmas presents. He was so excited by the minion pajamas Grandma sent that he decided to go into the bathroom and dress himself. (We asked him why in the bathroom. He said “A dunno” (a common phrase right now) and away he went. Then he stayed and drew on the mirror with the dry erase markers I use to chart fluids there for another 15 minutes.
We opened another traditional package – a Christmas book that we share with his birth parents. This year I picked “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” which seemed a bit over his head, but I thought appropriate for the year.
Except the no presents thing. Patrick had a little trouble setting down to sleep at first, but when he was sleep he was out cold. So Brian got out the presents that were hidden under the bed. This room is overflowing with presents from the hospital, from family, from friends, from co-workers. And I know there are more outside of this room, too.
And so, that was our Christmas eve. Different. Simpler. Uncluttered. Very few last-minute preparations. No hours spent on a fancy meal. A later bedtime than I’d usually allow. And lots of new friends.
Thanks to the kindness and generosity of others – this year is different, but not nearly as hard as I thought it would be as I laid awake in the hospital worrying about it a month ago.
Right now, my biggest worries are where we are going to put all these gifts once they are opened.. and how to convince Patrick to take a bath and put on clean pajamas (yes, that’s a short gut Christmas tradition) before diving into the pile of presents that are in the room he’s waking up in.
Patrick Hoopes 