Good evening, son, and happy birthday!<\/p>\n\n
Honestly, I’ve already told you several times today.<\/p>\n\n
At 2 AM when I came to see you sleeping.<\/p>\n\n
At 4 AM when you woke up.<\/p>\n\n
But there’s never too many times to tell you.<\/p>\n\n
I am deeply happy to have you with us.<\/p>\n\n
And especially to see you growing and developing as you are today.<\/p>\n\n
Nothing is perfect, but we are incredibly lucky to have you by our side.<\/p>\n\n
And I have enormous gratitude for that.<\/p>\n\n
Everything could have been much worse.<\/p>\n\n
Every night, when I take over from your mom at 2 AM, I tell myself we need to make the most of every moment with you.<\/p>\n\n
Because life has already shown us how quickly everything can change.<\/p>\n\n
And these past few days, something has changed.<\/p>\n\n
We’re managing to spend days without oxygen. Sometimes even nights. <\/p>\n\n
The ‘normal’ life we hoped for by 2026 is slowly starting to take shape.<\/p>\n\n
We’re staying home to protect you from viruses, but you, you’re breathing better.<\/p>\n\n
And that’s all that matters.<\/p>\n\n
It’s the best gift you could have given us.<\/p>\n\n
For your 1st birthday, we did something different.<\/p>\n\n
We couldn’t invite people to the house, so we organized your birthday online.<\/p>\n\n
There were the four of us here, with Fabi, your nanny.<\/p>\n\n
And behind the screens, there were all those people who have been following you for months.<\/p>\n\n
Nearly 200 guests. About fifty connected at the same time. <\/p>\n\n
Our friends from Mauritius and Australia were missing. The time difference was too complicated. <\/p>\n\n
But we thought of them.<\/p>\n\n
We had chosen The Little Prince theme.<\/p>\n\n
Because you are a bit like that too.<\/p>\n\n
A little being from elsewhere. Seemingly fragile, but with immense strength and light. <\/p>\n\n
We had planned a lot of things… and in the end, we kept it simple.<\/p>\n\n
A little music, your entrance to a Queen song,<\/p>\n\n
the happy birthday song, the candle, the cake, the thank yous.<\/p>\n\n
We adapted.<\/p>\n\n
And it was perfectly fine that way.<\/p>\n\n
We thanked everyone.<\/p>\n\n
For their presence.<\/p>\n\n
For their messages.<\/p>\n\n
For their prayers.<\/p>\n\n
For their energy.<\/p>\n\n
Because this year, we needed it.<\/p>\n\n
And we asked them for only one thing. To continue. <\/p>\n\n
To continue sending strength.<\/p>\n\n
To continue believing with us that one day, all this will be behind us.<\/p>\n\n
Dad even got out the turntables…<\/p>\n\n
We weren’t sure how to manage all those people.<\/p>\n\n
We wanted to do well, to please everyone… but it’s not that simple behind a screen.<\/p>\n\n
It was a beautiful experience.<\/p>\n\n
Tomorrow, you were supposed to have a lung scan.<\/p>\n\n
Ultimately, it was canceled after the party due to an emergency.<\/p>\n\n
It’s postponed until Thursday.<\/p>\n\n
So we wait.<\/p>\n\n
We see that things are getting better.<\/p>\n\n
But now, we need to know.<\/p>\n\n
We need answers.<\/p>\n\n
Can we hope for even better?<\/p>\n\n
Deep down, we still believe.<\/p>\n\n
We\u2019re doing everything we can!<\/p>\n\n
Regarding food, it’s still complicated.<\/p>\n\n
You’ve gained a little weight, you’re back above 8 kilos.<\/p>\n\n
But every meal remains a struggle.<\/p>\n\n
Your nanny is the only one who can get you to eat 100%, but not without difficulty, and by forcing you a bit too.<\/p>\n\n
This morning, I tried for an hour. It was impossible.<\/p>\n\n
We’re talking about doing a gastroscopy to check if there’s esophagitis.<\/p>\n\n
It was planned for this week. We were supposed to go back to Fortaleza. <\/p>\n\n
But we preferred to wait.<\/p>\n\n
Too many risks.<\/p>\n\n
Too much fear of viruses.<\/p>\n\n
And the flu vaccines we got last week aren’t fully effective for you yet.<\/p>\n\n
We’ll do it later.<\/p>\n\n
That’s the news.<\/p>\n\n
Today, we laughed.<\/p>\n\n
We shared.<\/p>\n\n
We celebrated.<\/p>\n\n
Your 1st birthday!<\/p>\n\n
I am proud of you.<\/p>\n\n
Your strength amazes and inspires me.<\/p>\n\n
I love you, my son.<\/p>\n\n
See you soon for the rest of our adventures.<\/p>\n\n
And long live you \u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n
You deserve it!<\/p>\n\n
Dad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Good evening, son, and happy birthday! Honestly, I’ve already told you several times today. At 2 AM when I came to see you sleeping. At 4 AM when you woke up. But there’s never too many times to tell you. I am deeply happy to have you with us. And especially to see you growing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs-of-a-heros-dad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5746"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5750,"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5746\/revisions\/5750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopeforgabriel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}