Lucky Day

Despite the grim anniversary date of Joshua's clinic appointment, 9-11, Joshua is calling it his lucky day!

I dont know when Joshua outgrew his sleeping-the-whole-way stage, but he now only naps a short time, somewhere in the middle, then we spend the last half hour of him asking, "Are we there yet?" I usually reply with how many miles we have left and the next five minutes he will ask, "How many more miles?" So as we are entering the city and he sees the tall buildings, he decided he wanted to count down the last minutes. So we have a little game where he says the first number and I say the second number, until we reach 60. Then we start over until we reach the desired minutes. When you say there are only 5 minutes left, and thanks to construction and detours there are actually more than 10... this makes a long game.

Josh decided that he wanted to wear his mask this month because he didnt want to get sick like last month. He's such a smart little man! But the only mask I had was a heavy duty adult mask. Josh was so happy to get back to our room so he could take it off! But before we got back there Josh was playing in the waiting room and found TWO strips of stickers! Lucky Day item #1!

Next, Kaykin (Kaitlynn) made a bet with Josh that he would cry when he got his port accessed. (Using a little reverse psychology). Usually we bet in back rubs, but this was a BIG bet worth one_whole_dollar! When the nurse came in to insert the needle, he got a little nervous, but he was already sitting on my lap and I quickly reminded him of his bet with Kaykin. He couldnt let her be right, so he sucked in his breath, puffed out his chest, and held on for dear might. It wasnt until after the needle was in that he left out his breath and waited for her to finish. The nurse wasnt out of the room yet and Josh went over to Kaitlynn and told her to "cough it over!" After we finished laughing in hysterics and she gave him his bribe money for the vending machine, he let out a self-assertive, "Sucker!" Lucky Day item #2!

Some of you may be familiar with the elevator game we play when we get to the hospital; and no, it isnt us racing each other on different elevators to our destination floor. There is a set of silver elevators that takes us up to to Floor 4B, almost never are either of the elevators on the first floor when we get there. Josh likes to race over to the elevators and press the "Up" button. While we are waiting, Josh chooses which elevator he thinks will get there the fastest. The big people's bet is then placed on leftover elevator. Winner gets a massage of their choice. Josh won the silver elevator bet, and of course he choose a back rub. On the way down we take the yellow elevators, they lead us to the cafeteria on the ground floor. There is one elevator on one side of the hall, and another on the opposite side. Again Josh somehow lucked out and picked the right elevator, this time winning a foot massage. I'm telling ya, it was close too, as we watched the numbers climb, I thought for sure I would win the second race, but somehow mine stopped on the floor below and didnt move again.

So we get down to the cafeteria, and Josh orders his usual chicken fingers complete with his beverage of the day. We were sitting at a table eating and a Childlife volunteer comes to the table and asks to sit down. He had a box of baseball cards and he told Josh he could pick out 20. Then he told Josh the only problem was that he didnt know how to count. After much deliberation and nitpicking, Josh settled on 17 cards. Baseball players, basketball players and he said he even needed some football players. Dont know who any of them were, but this was Lucky Day item #3! He could not wait to get home to show them to his daddy.

Then on the way out, the volunteer stopped Josh again and gave him Spiderman stickers. Spiderman! Of all people. "Can you believe how lucky I am today, Mom?" Lucky Day item #4!

On the way back up to the first floor, we again wait to board The Yellow Elevators. For the third time in a row, this fortunate fella won again, proclaiming that this time he wanted a shoulder rub! I told him we were lucky that this was the last elevator because he was running out of body parts to massage. Lucky Day item #5, 6 and 7!

When we got in the car, Josh was so excited he told us, "nobody is gonna ruin my Lucky Day." Kaitlynn and I couldnt help but laugh and before we even put the vehicle in Drive, I grabbed out my notebook to take notes so I wouldnt forget to journal about his prosperity!

Oh! I almost forgot to tell you about his other Lucky bit of news. His doctor told him that next month he can have his port taken out. Josh was asking him if it could be before we go to Florida because he wants to swim at the beach, so Dr. Wollman told him that it wouldnt be before our Lighthouse vacation, but we then tried to explain to him the difference between the ocean and a lake and why he would be able to swim in Florida. He couldnt wait to come home and tell everyone about that!! Lucky, lucky day!