Sunday, February 1, 2009

Cooperman the Superman

First, a couple of observations and thoughts and things I learned this week:

  • Don’t let my husband cut your hair. You should see Cooper’s new ‘do. (Although I will say that Cooper no longer has a mullet and Charlie no longer looks like Joe Biden).
  • One-year-olds always want the door shut. And then opened. And then shut. And they want to do all of the shutting and opening. No matter whose body is in the way.
  • The best sound in the world is laughing babies. The best sight is dancing babies.
  • Never underestimate the power of Costco free samples on a toddler.
  • Those leashes they make for toddlers do not work. Picture Zach and Charlie, running opposite directions, suddenly falling down once they ran out of slack… in the middle of a parking lot. I bought the leashes so they would be safe in parking lots. I want my money back!
  • Cat food is also Cooper food. But not Zach or Charlie food.
  • Charlie food is whatever is Raizel or Brian food.
  • Zach food is (still) almost entirely purees or dry, crunchy food. Thank God for feeding therapists.
  • Zach won’t eat a banana to save his life or even consider touching a fish stick. But he finds the furniture in doctor’s offices to be very tasty. (He does this to give his germaphobic mother anxiety attacks).
  • Don’t let three 1-year-old boys run around the house naked, even for a few seconds, even if you are about to put them into the tub. They know they aren’t wearing diapers and want to show you their talents. As I have written about before, my boys are very, ummm, talented.
  • The Kahn family is single-handedly saving Pampers from the recession.
  • In the triplets' language, the word “NO” is some kind of hilarious joke.
  • I wish I hadn’t taught the boys the words “up up up.” I hear it in my sleep.
  • I’d like kill whoever wrote “Wheels on the Bus.”

The week’s big news is that Cooper has started walking!! It is hard for me to put into words what this means to us. When Zach and Charlie started to walk, we were beyond excited. But Cooper walking is something entirely different. It is difficult for me to think back to the babies’ births and to the first two months of Zach and Charlie’s lives, and I really don’t like to think about the first six months of Cooper’s life. It still makes me extraordinarily sad to think of everything my children endured. Frankly, we weren’t sure if Cooper was going to make it out of the NICU, and if he did, what kinds of limitations he might have. Cooper had 20+ blood transfusions, at least 2 spinal taps, was on a ventilator, had countless infections, 2 surgeries, pneumonia, 4 broken bones, bronchial-pulmonary displasia, NEC (an intestine-eating disease), the list goes on and on. He came home the color of an oompa-loompa, on monitors, on so many meds and supplements that we had a chart on the refrigerator to keep track of it all, and all he could do was cry. Except that we couldn’t hear him cry, of course, because of the trach. He couldn’t even drink breast milk or regular formula for months, and when he took bottles, the nipples had to be slit just so Cooper could actually drink. And somehow, over a year after he came home from the NICU, he is TALKING and WALKING, and is now finally part of the triplet gang – laughing and chatting and dancing and keeping up with his brothers. Cooper is amazing. My children are miracles. I am in awe of them every single day. We are the most blessed parents on earth.