{"id":49247,"date":"2023-03-05T00:39:09","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T05:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=49247"},"modified":"2023-03-18T21:40:02","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T02:40:02","slug":"year-three-of-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=49247","title":{"rendered":"Year three of forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>And just like that, my eldest is three years old.\u00a0 As many of us parents like to opine and ponder, where has the time gone?<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s surreal to think that three years ago, #1 showed up five weeks early, and spent nearly the first month of her life in the hospital\u2019s NICU.\u00a0 Hooked up to machines and tubes until her body was strong enough for her to be allowed to come home, where she spent another seven weeks tethered to a portable heart rate monitor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually the monitor would go, she kept growing like a weed, we stopped referring to her as \u201cadjusted age\u201d and it\u2019s been a veritable roller coaster throughout the last three years of watching her grow, learn, develop and transform from the frail tiny preemie into the little threenager<\/em> that\u2019s full of opinions, emotions, energy and bursting with lifeWhy this is important and warranting a thoughtful blathering beyond the obvious every day and every birthday is important, is that three is the age in which I feel like I can recall beginning to have my own memories and really feeling like my own human being.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have fuzzy memories of playing in the living room of my old house, which was something that was pretty rare in later years of life, because we had a family room in which most activities would take place, but looking back at these memories that might\u2019ve been the family room back then.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was playing wiffleball with my dad, more specifically I was throwing a ball as hard as my little kid body could muster, but no matter what I threw, my dad would catch it.\u00a0 I remember thinking how incredible it was, and that he could catch absolutely anything in the world and being amazed an in awe of my own dad.<\/span><\/p>\n

As it\u2019s supremely important to be a fixture of my children\u2019s lives, I can only hope that as I continue to play and spend time with my kids every day, that memories of playing and hanging out with dad and mom start taking root and becoming the things that both my kids will reminisce and wax poetic about it in their own lives when they become teens and adults of their own.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hopefully, #1 will remember dad making her birthday cake for her, because she still can\u2019t eat eggs, and there was absolutely no way I was going to let her birthday pass without a cake.\u00a0 So I found a recipe for an eggless cake and did my best to make it, and although I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be getting any Paul Hollywood handshakes for it, she seemed to like it, and that is all that mattered.<\/span><\/p>\n

But man, three years.\u00a0 Born in perilous conditions, made worse by a global pandemic, and here she is, healthy, strong and smart as a whip, reading and using the bathroom on her own.\u00a0 Although she\u2019ll always be a baby to me, she\u2019s a far cry from the baby she was once.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next thing I know, I\u2019ll blink and she\u2019ll be getting ready for high school, her first job, and if she chooses, moving out and going to college.\u00a0 Hopefully then, I\u2019ll still be completely smitten with her and her sister, and just as in love with being their dad then as I am now.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And just like that, my eldest is three years old.\u00a0 As many of us parents like to opine and ponder, where has the time gone? It\u2019s surreal to think that three years ago, #1 showed up five weeks early, and spent nearly the first month of her life in the hospital\u2019s NICU.\u00a0 Hooked up to … Continue reading Year three of forever<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[100,193,71,56,192,158,129],"class_list":["post-49247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-comparison","tag-dad","tag-famiry","tag-food","tag-kids","tag-milestone","tag-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49247"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49277,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49247\/revisions\/49277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}