Today is October 26.  At 7am this morning (about 12 hours after surgery), Grayson got to leave the ICU/PACU and come up to the general surgery floor.  He had his own room for awhile, but now he's sharing with another baby who looks to be about his age.  The other baby is just waking up from anesthesia at the same time that Grayson had just fallen asleep.  Well, I suppose they can have conversations with each other in baby language (otherwise known as "Wail") for the next couple of days.

The doctors say Grayson is doing really great, and being out of the ICU so fast is a good sign.  He's trying to be active already - when his morphine was running out last night, about midnight, he flipped himself to his tummy, crawled up the bed and over to me where he stood up for me to hold him.  Crazy baby.  We let him sleep on his tummy for the rest of the night, which he seemed to like despite the fact that his head wasn't elevated.  Today he's been cuddly and grumpy.  It could be that he's more alert since we've moved him from the morphine to oxycodone and tylenol.  He's also had about 8 ounces of formula today, which is great.  He wants to be held a lot.  I am having flashbacks to when he was a newborn, and he only had three stages - eating, crying, and sleeping.  Holding him is awesome, but also a logistical feat - not only does he have stitches from ear to ear, but he also has cords coming out of every limb (2 foot IVs, monitors on both hands) and also the drain coming out of his head.  That will probably come out tomorrow.  Well, who can blame him for being grumpy right?

I prepared myself for a whole different baby, and I'm glad I did, but Josh and I agree that he still looks like Grayson.  Well, a big, bumpy, lumpy-headed version of Grayson :)  If I had any doubts, they were gone the minute he started getting all feisty with us ("Oh that one trying to put me in a choke hold?  Yep, he's ours").  God Bless all those cranio moms who shared pictures with us of their babies post-op so we knew what to expect.  I'll share pictures too, but I'll probably wait a couple of days.  The drain tube under his forehead is kind making him look kind of like Frankenstein, and he still has a lot of blood around/in his mouth (great for Halloween... or nightmares).  His CT scan looks completely surreal - there's a lot of bone missing and rearranged, which explains all the swelling.  But to us, he's still perfect.