Tay and I had quite a day today and still have half the day to go!
First, we woke up bright and early at 7am (early for a Saturday) and we made some breakfast. After breakfast, we got dressed and ready for the day, but we still had a lot of time before our first scheduled engagement, so I let her watch one episode of Dora the Explorer (her FAVORITE lately), and then we headed out the door. Since we still had an hour before our scheduled event, we dropped off some clothes at the thrift store and headed to the playground for some running around. She absolutely loved that, and for a short time, she even followed a little ant around the playground just to see where it would go…she lost interest after about five minutes, but those were an intriguing five minutes for her!
Soon it was almost time for our event, so we decided to leave the car at the playground and walk (through a jungle – small walking trail that cut across some woods) to the hospital for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) hospital visit. The VFW makes monthly visits to the hospital on the installation with fruit, candy and books for the in-patients, and since I am a member of the VFW and we had some free time this morning, I thought it might be a good experience for Tay to have a walk about the hospital and give out some candy. We had been reading a book where Curious George winds up in a hospital by accident and he brings laughter and joy to the kids there, so she was actually pretty excited about the prospect of getting to go on a hospital visit. I explained to her that there were people at the hospital who were sick and had boo-boos so we were going to give them some candy to make them happy. She told me, “I give them candy, too, Umma, and I kiss the boo-boos. They be so happy to see me!” Boy, was she right.
We met up with a few of the other VFW members in the lobby, and I told her she could have one candy herself first before we started our rounds, and she definitely liked that, but she never asked for any more. We started with the psychiatric ward, so we waited outside (children not allowed). Then we went to the maternity ward…where Tay got a kick out of giving candy to the new moms and seeing the tiny newborns (from a distance, of course). From there, we moved on to the general in-patient ward where she carried candy around in her pockets and handed them to everyone she saw. The patients seemed to enjoy seeing her come up and hand them candy with a shy little grin on her face and her sweet, “Get ber sooooon!” Next we stopped by ICU, but thankfully, there were no patients there. From there, we stopped by Radiology to give the staff there some candy before moving on to the Emergency Room. Again, it was all staff we saw there, but they loved how Tay went up to each of them to give them some candy. One lady told her “no, thank you” and must have told her that she could have the candy because she came back to me and said, “She no want candy. This candy for me. I eat candy.” So she was pretty happy with the fact that she could have another piece of candy herself. :) That was our last stop, so we left the remaining books, fruit and candy there and headed out.
I was originally a little nervous about how she might act or react to the hospital and patients there, but she seemed to have really enjoyed herself and brought a little laughter and joy to the staff and patients in the hospital. All in all, it was a very good experience for the both of us, so we may be making that a regular event for us…we’ll see.
After the hospital visit, we had planned on hitting the PCS garage sale that the Dragon Hill was having, but we were both exhausted and hungry, so we met the Cortezes at Greenstreet for lunch. Tay chowed down as if I hadn’t fed her in days…:) She even ate some of my salad, too…not to anyone’s surprise. After that, we let the kids run around the playground for about an hour or more until we saw them starting to fade…then we knew it was nap time. We brought them inside, cleaned them up, and made our way home…Tay conked out in the car.
Now, we’re home and she’s napping soundly as I write this. Hopefully she’ll sleep for another hour or so, and if she wakes up in time, we’ll go to Saturday evening Mass since I won’t be able to go tomorrow ‘cause I won’t have a valid ID that’ll let me on post. :P Ah well…
Think I’ll go nap with her now…getting very excited because Jeff’s coming home tonight!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!!
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