NICU Reunion

Every year in October the NICU where Cole stayed as a newborn does a reunion. We've never gone. It's always been something. First, it's in October, which is harvest so I'd have to go by myself. The first year it meant traveling with a newborn. The second year I don't remember what it was, but it probably involved harvest. Last year meant traveling with a newborn again, but this year I decided I was going. So I left after breakfast with the boys and started our 2 hour journey. We had snow the night before so the roads weren't great, but after about 20 miles they cleared up and except for the occasional waaay overly cautious driver, it was smooth sailing. We met my college roommate for lunch then headed to Toys R Us for a costume for Cole. Do you know the selection of costumes for a 3 year old boy is? Nada. We ended up buying a dress up outfit, which worked out fine.

We finally headed over to the reunion. It went ok. Cole was not a memorable baby, which was probably a good thing, but it made the reunion less fun for me. Cole enjoyed it. They had some carnival games, a bouncy house, an inflatable slide, and another inflatable climbing wall/slide thingy. He went down the slide by himself and even tried the thingy. I was nervous about that. He did the short wall fine, it was the big wall that he had trouble with. It started out ok but then a bunch of kids came in after him and that made him nervous. He finished it though and he was so proud and Mommy was too, of course. As for me, there was only one nurse I remembered and I didn't like her. She was loud and obnoxious. One of the doctors was there. I think he recognized me, but that's probably about it. A couple of the nurses recognized the name, but he didn't stick out in any one's memory. There were a couple of other kids there that were there at the same time. One was about 10 months at the time Cole was born, the other was there about a week before we left. The 10 month old was born at 24 or 26 weeks and she had a lot of problems, but from the look of her, she hasn't seemed to suffer any major issues. I of course forgot my camera, so here is the only picture we got.