Today L is 3 years and 131 days old.

I suppose this should be a Throwback Thursday post, but since the days of the week were not serendipitous, how about let’s call it “Feels Friday.”

On September 30, 2013, after watching dozens of new mothers departing the hospital blissfully unaware (or so it seemed to me at the time) of exactly how lucky they were with their discharge papers and their babies who didn’t even need to be plugged in to the wall, Z and the NICU staff loaded me up in a wheelchair with my 4.5-month-old son and a bouquet of “It’s a boy!” balloons and made a small spectacle from the NICU to the hospital doors while passers-by looked on and wondered how on earth I managed to be in such good shape after pushing out that  ridiculously large and strangely alert newborn.

Three years ago today L came home at last, and we finally turned off the porch light that had been burning for 131 nights awaiting the day our entire family would finally be home.

Not to be outdone by himself, L decided to celebrate the one-year anniversary of his going home day by going home yet again. We had planned to find a fun place for a 1-year-and-131-day old boy to have a celebratory dinner, but instead we were wrapping up a nearly 2-week inpatient stay that began with an emergency blood transfusion, ran the gamut of stress, frustration, denial, and mama-rage, ended with a new line placement and TPN, and was capped off by an extra three days inpatient while we waited for the ****wads at our insurance company to get their act together so we could be discharged with services from a home health pharmacy.

Last year? I honestly don’t remember what we did last year. To a certain extent every happening and milestone are etched into my brain, but his first going-home day actually at home is not one of them, and given the circumstances of the year before I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Tonight we are going to The Restaurant with the Car Playground at L’s request, and spending our after-bedtime hours working on another kind of “coming home” by cleaning and moving furniture into the main floor of our new home, where we have been living mostly in the basement for the last two months. It’s still a work in progress, but I think it’s safe to say that’s a pretty good way to describe most things in our lives.

And next year? Who knows. So many, many possibilities lie between now and then. For now, we are taking things one day at a time.

Happy Coming Home day, baby boy.

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