I can't say I wasn't warned

My grandparents visited yesterday and my grandmother left a book of all my Kittyboy e-mails - from his exciting birth onward - that she had printed off the computer. I was enjoying flipping through and reading them all again, and I found one that I thought everyone would appreciate. I wrote this on Feb 22 '06, he was still in NICU and still "negative-1 months" in age.

"[Kittyboy] is trying to wean himself off his oxygen, which we're all in agreement is a good thing. He'll get the canula out, or partially out, and do fine for more than a few minutes without it, so it's agreed that when we see it out, we let it stay that way as long as his O2 is good. Anyhow, I was holding him tonight and his canula was out and his thumb was hooked through it, and he WAS doing fine for a good ten minutes or so, and then his O2 slowly dipped into the 80s and wasn't going back up, and when it got down to 80 I figured I'd better get the canula back in before [the monitor] went from yellow dinging to RED dinging, which it does below 80. I tried putting it back in, but because of his thumb being through it, he just pulled it out again and held it away from his face. Set him down so I'd have both hands, tried to slide his thumb out, and he curled it around the tube so I couldn't. By the time I got his thumb out, he was MAD and waving his arms and wailing. I'd get the canula back in, but he'd wave his arms and pull at it and twist around so it'd come out completely and get pulled to the side. So I caught both of his arms with one hand, held them down away from his face, and was trying to fix (and tighten) the tubes with my free hand. After all, his oxygen wasn't coming back up, so the tubes really had to go back in somehow. "Now you listen here, young man..." At the same time though, his heartrate and breathing were going up and up and up, because of course he was moving around and angry and fighting me with all his might. Finally I figured if he didn't calm down, he'd have a tachycardia episode and it'd be a bigger deal than just low oxygen, so I let go and stepped back and told him if he wanted them out that badly, he had to bring his oxygen up, end of discussion. And would you believe, after he stopped yelling and rolling around, his O2 level went right back up into the 90s. And stayed there. Maybe it has to do with the deep breathing you do when you've worn yourself out, because I'm sure he was exhausted. Or maybe he'd decided to do whatever it took to make Mommy leave the tubes out. Either way, we both won - the tubes stayed out and the O2 came up to where it was supposed to be.
The toddler years should be INTERESTING..." (emphasis added)

GEE, YA THINK???

It's just so fascinating to me how a baby's personality is all right there even before birth. I remember my grandma telling me, way back when I was still pregnant, that the personality in the womb is the personality out of it, that my mother was content to sit in one spot and kick in one spot for nine long months, and then as a child she was perfectly happy to sit in one place and play with one toy for long lengths of time as well. I laughed and told her that the baby then known as "Popcorn" was happily bopping all around my innards exactly as if I had popping popcorn in my tummy, so what was I in for? Grandma's advice was practical and to the point - "Fence your yard."
Many a time have I wished for a fenced yard - complete with gated driveway.
A month before he was supposed to be due, we were fighting over oxygen tubes and I blithely, naively wrote that "the toddler years should be interesting." Interesting IS one word for it. And his temper and will were already there at -1 months.

"For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb."