Today Patri and I attended a talk about bringing your NICU baby home. There were several parents in the auditorium, all who sat perfectly still and attentive. And then there were Patri and I in the back, shifting around in our seats and jittering ;)

I can't wait until we can have Tovar with us to complete the ADD family effect :) I mean, he might not end up with it, but as if having it run on both sides of his family wasn't enough, being a premie also makes him much more likely to have it ;)

It was also amusing to contrast our styles of ADD. While we both shifted around and jittered a fair bit, Patri was clearly doing so to use up his extra attention, whereas I was doing so to try to pay attention.

What made the difference most pronounced to me was when mid-jitter, Patri all of a sudden stopped and asked a question which showed that he'd taken in everything that the speaker had said. There's no way I could have been moving around that much and still paying attention!!

Since I'm nowhere near as good at multitasking as Patri is, I tend to withdraw from under-stimulating captive experiences rather than seek to add more stimulation to them. I just zone out. When I was a kid I think I mostly just drew pictures or daydreamed about odd fantasies, but as an adult I think my journal is a pretty fair representation of the sorts of thoughts that tend to fill my head when my eyes glaze over... for instance, I've been working out various aspects of this journal all day during meetings with hospital staff ;)