Lights, Camera, terrifying waiting room

Well another day in the books and ready to start another.  Piper returned with Grandma and Grandpa Doering (or as Piper calls them Papa and RaRa).

Piper had been staying with our neighbors and close friends for a few days in an attempt to keep things are normal for her as possible.  From what I have been told she participated, or likely took over a gymnastics class, ran rampant around the local ballparks during our neighbor's kids games, and insisted on having "roni cheese" for every meal, which is "Piper speak" for macaroni and cheese.  For those you that know Traci and I well, you know we are a bit of health nuts thus dad has been attempting to find a healthy recipe that tastes close to the lauded "roni cheese"....I have yet to find anything.  If I do, I will post it for everyone!

Piper was very happy to see her mommy and daddy, and latched onto mom like a spider monkey when she saw her.  She was thrilled to see her baby sister and still insisted on trying to hold her although its not possible for her right now with all the lines and sensors she is currently has hooked up to her.

Maizy's bilirubin was high on Friday so she is now under some lights that resemble a baby tanning bed, of course she has on an eye cover that looks like a cross between old timey aviatior googles and  burn victim gauze.  It's a bit strange to say the least.  However it's not a big deal and we got to see her little eyes quite a bit today when they would take her off the lights.  Her bilirubin count was 14.8 yesterday, and it is already down to 12.4 so she is doing awesome, and thanks to her tanning bed she will be up and ready for a starting slot on Jersey Shore in no time. * As a sidebar to this post it is worth noting that initially I had mispelled bilirubin, and was spelling it billy rubin.  Traci of course caught this and made fun of me, asking me "who is Billy Rubin?"   However I caught it before I posted, thus it does not count as a typo.*

I will be doing my best to post some more pictures tomorrow, its late and I am typing in the dark, thus posting pics by sending them from my phone to my computer, or whatever vodoo magic I have to do will need to wait till tomorrow.

As I said in an earlier post Childrens Mercy Hospital has been amazing, the staff here is phenomenol.  However I do have one complaint so now that everyone has been updated, I will go off on a Dad rant for just a moment.  My one complaint, which is actually completely out the hospitals control, is the waiting room, or as I like to refer to it as "the 7th layer of Hell" or "that damn place full of thugs and scary toddlers." 

It is truly unbelieveable, last night someone took it upon themselves to dump coffee in the toilet, lose part of their hair weave in the bathroom sink, open up most if not all of the coffee creamer and sugar packets and dump them all over the place, and generally just jack everything up they came in contact with.  Tonight was pretty much the same scenario, except there was even more scary toddlers, (I believe all from the same family of morons), and what appeared to be more destruction.  The maintenance crew at Childrens Mercy must think that the someone is driving a bulldozer through the waiting room at the NICU.   There is seriously a toddler in there that I think would stab me if he could get ahold of a knife, shank, or sharpened Hot Wheels car. 

Anyway I digress, and I must say for the most part we have really met some fantastic parents of other babies in the NICU.  We are kind of a team, always asking how everyone else's children are, and giving each encouragment as our little ones grown stronger.

It's worth noting that this evening Piper wanted something out of the vending machine, which generally I would say no to, however she was exhausted and I was losing my patience with the monsters in the waiting room, so I relented.  However, all I had was a $5 and of course the machine kept spitting it back out.  I could see Piper losing patience with dad, and I was looking for chair to put through the glass in the vending machine.  Just when I was about to start flipping furniture, a woman gave Piper $1, she said she was a grandma, and that they were having a tough time, and she just wanted to do something for Piper.  The entire family was crying, you could tell that more than likely something terrible had happened, and by the way they looked I suspected they might be losing a young one.  So tonight before you go to sleep, when you say a prayer for Maizy, please say a prayer for the nice woman and her family.  I think they need it.