9:00 AM — Talked about being bored out of your mind – the only thing that has helped is secretly planning my escape from NICU.  After resting comfortably for the last few hours and surveying my resources and options, I decided the best course of action was to enlist the help of my fellow inamtes.  They all agreeed to help, so after the morning round of giving blood and x-rays, precisely at 8:30 AM, we started choir practice.  Not bad for a bunch of weak-lunged kids.  Thinking that the nurses would be distracted by the joyful noise, I caught dad’s attention and whispered that we needed to seize the opportunity created by the confusion and run.  Unfortunately, dad seemed to be working on some other method of escape that involved blinding the captors with the flash bulbs on his camera.  He should have known that was too amateurish to work.  The head NICU nurse saw right through his plan and put the floor on lockdown.  Choir practice ceased as they stuck bottles in our mouths to prevent further communication.  Hopefully, between today and tomorrow, I can come up with a better plan so that I can get downstairs to my mama. – JTT

2:00 AM — Having been away from my mom and dad for a few hours in the nursery, I started to get a little worried and call out to them.  Unfortunately, the nurses didn’t recognize my summons for what they were and instead labeled them grunting.  That made me mad and so they diligently noted the flaring of my nostrils in the log notes.  This is all so new to me that I didn’t realize grunting and flaring would precipitate a little trip.  So instead of going to spend the night with mom, I got sent to the NICU with promises that my stay shouldn’t be too long.  Dad tried to break me out while I took a couple of swings at the nurses which made them mad and now I’m wrapped up in a little makeshift straitjacket.  Now I’ve just got to play along and I’ve decided to look at the bright side – hopefully the air is better up here and will help settle my breathing down.  More updates to come when the sun rises. – JTT