June 10th...A Year Later

Yesterday came and went rather uneventfully.  We headed over to the pool in the early afternoon for the opening pool social and spent the day with many of our friends.  It wasn't until quite late last night that it occurred to me that it has been a year ago that Maura came home from the NICU.

June 10th...yes, the date won't ever be forgotten.  It's almost like a second birthday.  It was our moment to start our lives outside the dark halls of the NICU.  I took Maura home all by myself.  By June 10th, Joe had taken quite a few days, and we knew it was just paperwork that day.  Maura and I headed to Potbelly where I had lunch one last time before our escape.

Yesterday was much different.  She splashed in the pool all afternoon.  The girl is even getting a tan! I think we have the same skin.  I noticed that while I was nursing her today.  We both had the same shade of tan.  Patrick is much pastier than I am, although he tans well too.  Maura smiled at everybody and wore her little itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini and we ate good food until our heart's content.

You'd look at her today and never know she spent 35 days in the NICU.  You'd never know it's been nearly 4 months since her last seizure.  She's doing well.  We just had her reevaluation testing for Early Intervention, and while I've been knee deep in Maura's life for a year, I learned a lot.

Low tone is not just muscle strength.  It's the state of your muscles at rest.  Maura is still quite floppy at rest.  Her fine motor skills are still behind quite a bit.  She has difficulty mastering the use of her pincher grasp and she doesn't know what chewing is quite yet.  Her depth perception is still lacking.  But the girl pulls up to a stand and talks up a storm with all her mamama's and ba ba ba's ..  She's making huge strides.  That's what counts most!

So as we celebrated our lives yesterday, the anniversary of Maura's triumphant homecoming rather slipped away quite quietly...perhaps the best way of all...