Merry Christmas Miracle!

We started Christmas at 2:30 this morning! Brennan was so excited that when he saw that Santa had arrived he was ready to open presents! He first asked to just open one, then two, then he was quickly snooping through everything (looking for his iPod) and I kept telling him to get away and we would open the rest in the morning. Well, the iPod was in a felt Santa gift bag and he spotted it. So I made Casey get up so he could open everything. He wasn't going back to bed either way so why not and how can you deny an excited kid on Christmas?? It's like waking up at normal time in the morning, seeing all of your presents and being told to go back to bed. Brennan and I stayed up for about an hour and he was soooo excited the whole time. You know, like a kid on Christmas morning-it was worth it:) He played around with the iPod this morning (normal hours of the morning) and did face time with Paw Paw (my dad), GiGi (my mom), my brothers and sister, Maw Maw (my step-mom). He loves it!

After that we went to visit Reese and Scotlyn and took their wreath. The old bow was faded so I got a new sparkly bow this year and decorated it with new butterflies too. I love our little wreath. I don't like having a lot of things there, I like to keep it simple. The holidays really have never been the same for me since we have to celebrate without them. Our little girls should be 4 years old and our lives so different. Every day has some bitterness added without them here, but my pregnancy (and mostly) my delivery and NICU stay with Brooks has stirred up a lot of memories and emotions surrounding their loss. We miss them so very much.

 I hope they are having a Merry Little Christmas in Heaven♥

The amazing Carly Marie and her beach Christmas Tree:)

We went to my mom's like we do every year. I had a lot of anxiety about leaving this guy with no family with him on Christmas, but as with every other day I am trying to keep things pretty routine for Brennan. Luckily he had some awesome nurses today (who work in his room all the time and have become friends♥)

And we went to visit when we left my mom's house. His outfit is from my sister, the bow tie is almost as big as his head:) He looks so cute though and the nurses loved it!

Unfortunately for Brooks he has been tortured with a few photo ops lately...I hope he can get used to it with this mama:)

Our sweetest little gift♥

Casey asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him I already have my present-the best one I could ever dream of and have dreamed of for the last three Christmases. And if I never got another thing again in my whole life to keep this baby boy that would be fine by me.

I LOVE when he puckers his lips like this:)

And when he stares at me...so sweet.

So this Christmas we got everything we could dream of and more. We have two more celebrations this weekend. We are so lucky to have so much family to celebrate the holidays with. Of course, it is not the same without Brooks being able to be with us, but just as I am adjusting to daily life with him in the NICU, I am trying to adjust to the holidays as well. Hoping it won't be too much longer.

As for an update on my little sweet pea-he is 4lbs 11oz-getting close to 5lbs! It seemed like his weight gain slowed and most likely did, I'm not sure what the weekly total is, but since he is taking bottles he is using more energy so that's kind of expected. He has done really well without the flow. He has been comfortable breathing, comfortable eating so it seems like he is tolerating it. Yesterday morning at 5am he did have an apneic episode, not associated with feeding the he required stimulation for. They said one episode was not enough to put him back on flow or restart the caffeine for and luckily he hasn't had anymore. If he was doing it consistently then they would consider one or the other. He did have a couple of episodes with feeds/reflux yesterday, no stim and the Nurse Practitioner said she is not worried about those at all. As he gets bigger he should grow out of those associated with feeds and they don't count those for needing the flow or caffeine. He had one dip in sats today, but he came right back up. She did push his tube in a little further just to be sure that since he has grown that it was in far enough. He slacked a little on bottles the first day after the flow was off, but he is picking up again and he took 2 full bottles last night and almost a full one for me. Once he is taking 75% bottles (consistently) he will get the tube out. One other thing is he has had a few newborn screens drawn and the first two were normal, but the last one showed an abnormality with his thyroid. They did some additional testing and one of his thyroid levels were high which shows that his body is compensating for low thyroid production. They talked to the endocrine team and they said they would check another in 2 weeks and they think it is just from him being premature. If it is still abnormal they will start him on some medicine to replace the thyroid hormone. They usually just have to take that for a year. If that's all we come out of the NICU with, that would be just fine. So he just needs to grow a little more and continue being a rock star with bottles and hopefully we can keep moving forward to our ultimate goal-home!