june 6th.

I started drafting a letter for Valentina, the inscription for a book I began reading to her yesterday.  As I started to write, I realized that yesterday was June 6th...  And all of a sudden, all these memories started flooding in.... The book I was inscribing, I bought about 10 years ago, because I thought it was a pretty cool version of Anderson's Fairy Tales.  Super old school, 1970s reprint from the 1940s edition.  Nothing extraordinary, I just saw it somewhere and bought it, thinking it would be an important classic to have on hand, when I one day had kids.  And June 6th... I remember the 666 party in Ithaca, oh so many moons ago... The tattoo I meant to get that day but was too tanked to remember to get until the next day, and subsequently DIDNT, because the magic was past... Still kicking myself for that one... I wasn't overly nostalgic for the party days of my 20s, but it was a nice trip down memory lane, all connected to this book I was holding in my hands in the NICU, sitting in front of my daughter.  I have a daughter, WOAH. In the book, was a flier and bookmark for the 2005 Ithaca College seniors art show.  Just a little food for thought, stringing together memories that are loosely connected from different pieces in my life, leading me to Lisbon, looking at my tiny baby, reading to her while she sleeps.

Yesterday, Valentina Lee was 980 grams (2.16 lbs!!!).  Still, I won't celebrate the 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) benchmark until she is more than 1000 grams for at least a week (and is confirmed by a second incubator scale)... I was a little heartbroken when I thought my baby grew 100 grams in a day, and then it turns out, didn't...  SO.  Hopefully today, we will reach that 1000 grams, aka... if we low-ball the scale, I'd say she'd be 900 grams...  Am I making sense?  Exhaustion is setting in....  By the way, Vivi is now taking 30 grams of milk, 6 times a day!  My little piggily-wiggily!!!  Yesterday, she had a pretty good day, though she will be on some serious antibiotics for the next 10 days to fight the bacterial lung infection.  The doctor that I spoke to yesterday is hopeful that the infection will clear up and be gone permanently after this.  Vivi kept pulling out her IV, so the poor baby had to have a central line put back in...  And when the nurse vacuumed out her nose and mouth, there was still blood in her nasal passages, a result of just super- sensitive membranes inside our heads (this is relatively normal) but the problem is, is that it is so hard for it to heal, as the oxygen pump she needs 24/7 to help her breathe, dries out the nasal passages and then they bleed...  Poor petunia...   

Anyhow... I am off to the hospital...  Wish our baby luck!! <3

*grow.baby.grow*