I think my favorite time bonding with David right now is after he’s had the last drink from his bottle and he starts falling back asleep on my shoulder after burping.

And I don’t just say that because it’s easy, but let’s be honest here – he’s nine weeks old right now, so it’s not like we’re singing along with goofy Elmo songs and building with Legos together just yet! Infants pretty much have three objectives at this stage in their lives – eat, sleep, and shit – and there’s only so much of that which can really be turned into good bonding situations to begin with…

Plus, for what it’s worth I can admit more freely now that I had a really hard time with Christopher when he was around this age for a number of reasons, so in turn as I’ve learned a bit from that experience, I’ve come to appreciate that brief falling back asleep as a nice calm to be savored instead of the saving grace that it all too often represented when I was desperately trying to soothe his older brother at three in the morning while my wife was at work and I was trying to sleep myself!

Tomorrow should be an interesting day because unless something changes in the next twelve hours, in the morning we’ll be heading over to the hospital to bring Matthew home after his own 57-day stay in the NICU – which is both somewhat daunting as well as a tremendous relief at the same time! It’s pretty much a guarantee that I’ll blog more about how our dynamic changes around home over the next week as we try to get everyone settled, but for now I know that it’s sure going to be swell not having all of those trips to the hospital.

I suppose the thankful list ought to be pretty easy to put together for Thanksgiving this year! 😉