While we waited for Nolan to be ready to finally breathe on his own, we noticed that he was becoming much more alert when we would visit.  He would open his eyes sometimes and look at us and even squeeze our fingers.  It was a really nice thing to see, plus respiratory said he was making some really nice progress on his breathing.  Here’s Nolan with his big eyes open:

Of course, I have to begin training them early:

Nolan was especially happy to spend time with his mommy:

One thing that was the hardest during Nolan’s recovery was the fact that we couldn’t hold him.  There were days where Bekah and I wanted nothing more than to scoop him up and love on him.  One day we were telling one of the nurses that we couldn’t wait til he was extubated for good so that we could start holding him, and she said, “Wait, you haven’t held him?  No way, we can make that happen.”  So she did make it happen, and one day while I was at work Bekah got to spend some time holding her little Nolan: