Saturday January 9, 2010

Today was totally awesome with dad! I enjoyed my time so much! When he saw me, he gave me such a big, tight hug and a kiss. We talked for a few minutes and then he wanted me to take him on a walk around the halls. We started to go and he said, "don't forget your purse, you don't want someone to take it." He told me which way to go and when we passed the nurses station on the other side of the hall, he said, "stop!" and he tried to get one of the nurses' attention. She looked up and he smiled and waved, "hi". Then he had me take him to the big window overlooking the valley and we sat there for a few minutes. He pointed and said, "that's the Women's Center." Sure enough - it was! We went back to his room.

I was sitting on the bed and the cleaning lady came in. He motioned for me to move off the bed because she had to make the bed. She got paged away to another room so she said, "I'll finish this in a minute." She had put clean sheets and blankets on it, but hadn't "tucked" in the sides. He didn't want me to sit on the bed because she "hadn't finished yet." When she was gathering up the sheets and blankets, he started pointing and talking (couldn't understand him). We looked and sure enough, she was gathering up his John Wayne blanket with the hospital stuff. She pulled it out and he smiled.

We then talked about my family and he wanted so bad to form his words, but they kept coming out as babble, so he swore :) It made me chuckle. He's really frustrated and he'll just shake his head like, "never mind, I can't do it" but we encourage him to keep trying!

I asked him if Mike had been in to see him. He said, "not for 3 days!" I thought, "oh he's just throwing out a number" but when Mike got there, I asked him and he really hadn't been in for 3 days! Uncle Mike brought in some ABC flash cards so we went through those and there were just a couple he couldn't remember, but the 2nd time we went through them, he did really well! Uncle Mike then came in then and had another set of flash cards. This time with ABC's and pictures. Dad would do pretty good at reading the words (of the picture). Most of the time he would just get the first letter sound right, but Mike would encourage him and try to get him to tell him what the picture was. One time, for the word "kite" Mike said, "this is what the kids would fly on a string at the beach" and dad said, "bloomers". It was pretty funny :)

Mom said they're going to try and have him walk around the halls tomorrow on his own. His progress is slow, but steady. I wish I were closer. I loved spending time with him today.

Susie