A good day

I'm very sorry; I do not have a picture from today for you to see. I really have no excuse, as I had my camera with me all day at the hospital.

You see, what happened is pretty simple, we had a great day.

I arrived around 10 AM, Mommy headed off to work and Aunt CeCe and her friend, Nancy headed back to the office. Nancy promised Eden some sugar cookies soon. Aunt CeCe is having a slumber party with Eden Wednesday night at the hospital so maybe Nancy will bring the cookies for them to have at their tea party.

After everyone said their good-byes and I Love Yous, Eden finished up breakfast and headed into the bathtub. Now you wouldn't think that taking a bath is a big deal, would you? I was worried about getting the bandage on Eden's neck wet, so I asked for help to wash her hair. Guess what? They don't get to wash a lot of hair on J5. Apparently most of their kids are bald. Mindy had a wonderful time doing Eden's hair for me. I was just a little nervous, so I figured I could blame Mindy if there was too much wetness. Well, Mindy showed me how it's done, so we know what to do now. Do NOT wrap so much Saran Wrap around Eden's neck that she cannot tilt her head back to rinse her hair. That seems pretty simple, huh? I'll try it tomorrow. I think.

After bath time and getting dressed, we headed for the playroom to play air hockey. We joked around good-naturedly about who was going to beat whom. Eden swore she was going to beat me, but today I got her; thanks to Tasha and Elaine from the Children's Hospital Foundation. They popped in while we were playing so we took a break and never got back to the game. We'll have a rematch tomorrow. Tasha and Elaine brought Eden a kitty balloon and a PINK gorilla. How perfectly Eden-esque. The gorilla was sitting on the infusion pump on her IV tree all day. It got a nice tour of the hospital, because we made a break for freedom just after lunch!

No one got to fill out a menu for Eden yesterday, so she got a generic lunch. She got a pepperoni pizza with French fries. She tried to eat it, but she did not like the pizza and wanted me to go to the cafeteria for her. I said I would and headed to the nurses' station to let them know I would be gone for a few minutes. Our sweet friend, Mindy (today's personal care assistant for Eden) said I could take her with me if I wanted. Now I must say here that I have NEVER been allowed to take Eden off of J5 before. I asked if she was sure, as she kind of scared me. I'm the stepmom; I wouldn't want to get accused if kidnapping a princess! We stepmothers have gotten a bad RAP!

But, I digress...we went outside. We got sunshine. We had fun. We went to the cafeteria; there was nothing that she wanted to eat. We went back to J5, but Eden wanted to go to the 3rd floor playground. She was pretty tired, so I cut her a deal. If she would nap, I would make sure that she got to go to that cool playground (as long as the doctors said ok). We ate some chocolate pudding and we cuddled up for a nap. She slept very well. No snoring, not restless; she just slept.

She slept until Daddy got there around 3:45 PM. I gave dad the lowdown and turned to leave and ran into Poppa Ron at the door. He stayed and visited for a while, Daddy said. That's a good thing, Poppa Ron has been having a really hard time with all of this stuff, and he needed a good dose of fully rested Eden.

Nurse Mary (Eden's school nurse) stopped in for a visit with her daughter, Emily. Daddy said it was a great visit, too. He enjoyed getting to know Nurse Mary, as Lisa and I usually handle the school contact; he gets a little left out.

The Gordon Crew came to visit Eden this evening and brought Riley along, too. I was busy doing laundry and cleaning the house, so I let Riley go with them, as he wanted to go to the hospital. I will never discourage that, even if he didn't spend much time with Eden. Eden and Stacey hung out while Daddy and DJ did some guy-stuff or something.

So you see there was just no time for pictures today. I'm sorry that you don’t get to see how wonderful she looked today, but I sure am glad that I was able to!