July 21st Wednesday: A Day of Birthday songs

Wednesday morning came waaay to early for all of us but it was going to be a good day. The first one through the door to wish Charlotte a Happy Birthday was her new friend Brynn. We had just met this sweet girl and her parents in the hall the evening before. Brynn is 10 and had just been recently diagnosed. (It always really hard to see new families admitted here, this is not somewhere you want to meet people!) Anyways Charlotte just loved her, the two of them played in the hall for an hour, Brynn was so great and the two of them were inseparable. She came with a gift and a fancy card she had made and during breakfast time since she was not allowed to eat as she was getting ready for surgery that morning.

Then the nurses and our hospital staff friends came by with a helium balloon, cupcakes and presents. Everyone sang, then she sang the first line over and over for the rest of the day, it was pretty cute. It made me a bit sad though; I had stuff waiting in a box at home ready for her second birthday party. She also got some stickers from a few different nurses and doctors we saw in the hall, everyone seemed to know it was her birthday.

Oma and Opa came by with her aunties and uncles with some gifts and birthday hugs. She always gets so excited to see her aunties and uncles, her little face just lights right up. Ans the fact that we all sang to her again seemed really exciting. So cute.

Our friends at the RMcD house made a fancy shmancy birthday cake, two different flavoured tiers. And they made her a “happy birthday video” of everyone at the house singing and wishing her the best. That all just about had us in tears too... of course I was way overtired and it would not take much to set me off that day.

There was also a bingo game going on that afternoon. Charlotte loves to “dab,” not necessarily the numbers called but all of them as fast as she can. She usually has a full blackout by the time they have called the third number. Luckily mommy’s card was a winner and she got to pick out a couple of toys. Bingo at both the hospital and RMcD is great, the kids love it! They start by wheeling out a huge cart of toys that could give Santa’s sleigh a run for its money. Then we lay out some newspaper and dabbers for the youngest kids to muck around with while the older kids all eyeball the cart. We usually play enough games that everyone wins a prize or two. All the toys have been donated; I think most come in from Christmas toy drives. A volunteer at RMcD house says that the store room fills right up at Christmas and they pace them a bit to last the year. So if you have ever donated toys at Christmas, thank you- these kids enjoy them all year.

While we were finishing up bingo our doctor told us she thought Charlotte was doing well enough that we could be discharged to RMcD. This was wonderful to hear, when we were first getting prepped for this round of chemo it sounded like we would be admitted for the bulk of the round. So getting discharged after only a week was a nice surprise. So after some teaching about her new meds we were out the door by 4:00.

Here we are back at the house with our friend Chloe.