in case anyone wants to read my children's visit..
Day Three: Friday, August 27th, 2004
Place: Janet Weis Children’s Hospital
Time: 1:30-3:20 p.m.
Ahh..what a day. Today is the third day that I’ve visited the Janet Weis Children’s Hospital
(successfully). My day started at seven-thirty when I woke up and showered. My boyfriend of a year and a
half and best friend, Eric, came by and drove me to the local craft store, JoAnn Fabrics, where I loaded up on
even more supplies for the kids.
The day before, my mother had gone to JoAnn’s without me (!! the horror) and had bought supplies
for the one idea we had not agreed on- masks. My mom thought it would be the best idea, I, on the other
hand, thought it would be too scary. I don’t know. But yeah, she had bought several plastic masks, along
with bags of feathers, stars and rhinestones, for the kids to decorate the masks with. Once I saw the mask
supplies, though, I changed my mind. Hmm..maybe it would be a good idea. It looked very neat and
interesting to do; even to a seventeen-year old-me!.
So at JoAnn’s this morning, I was eager to begin the mask craft. I bought a three-pack more of plain
white plastic masks, including more feathers and assorted cotton-ey balls. Also, I bought (just in case I didn’t
have enough fabric for pillows), I bought a yard of Spiderman and Spongebob fabric, each. The kids’ll
definitely love this, I thought. They always go NUTS over the pillows. Especially ones with Spongebob and
Spiderman? I better prep myself.
Along with those supplies, I also bought additional stuffing for the pillows, a small plain denim purse
(in case the little girls-or boys-wanted to decorate it), and one..very..odd thing. Out of plain curiosity, I was
rifling through the clearance bins and found a whole jumble and heap of thick zebra fur; something I normally
wouldn’t even bother taking a second glance at. But something told me to stop and take it-hey, the kids
would like it. Kids can be a bit strange. So in addition to the other supplies I had already bought, I added the
zebra fur onto them. They could make something out of this, I told myself. What? I would soon find out.
The ride up to Danville went..unusually..quick. Assuming there would be traffic and construction, like
there always was, my mother and I set out at a little before quarter to twelve, when again, we didn’t have to
get there until one-thirty. But we would soon be surprised. There was absolutely no traffic; there was
construction, but it was few and far in between; and the ride took us up to Danville with almost an hour to
spare.
We stopped at the local McDonald’s and actually ate in the restaurant, taking as much time as
possible to take up the hour. Hey, rather be early than late, right? When it was time to leave, we left for the
hospital, a mile away. When we got there, we still had fifteen minutes to spare.
I pressed the elevator key to the third floor and held my breath. I hate elevators. My mother and I
got up to the third floor, waited for awhile, and Maggie, the special events coordinator, was nowhere in sight.
Hmm..did I forget to tell her I’d be coming twice this week? No..she wasn’t in on Tuesday, but another
coordinator was; and she knew I was going to. I assumed she would’ve told her. But anyways, my
nervousness gathered as the minutes slowly went by.
Finally, Maggie got off of the elevator and said that instead of the third floor, we would be gathering
in the second floor gameroom/playroom that day because some of the children, due to their illnesses, would
not be able to venture up to the third floor. Thank goodness, I sighed to myself, she’s here. We arrived at
the second floor playroom, a room identical to the third floor’s except for the absence of the filled fishtank,
and opened up the door. Maggie then told me then that there’d be two of the same patients I had the last
time I was there, just three days previously. ‘Bianca and Aliyah?’ my mother asked. Yes, Maggie said.
I opened up the door farther and stepped in. A smiling Bianca came over with a bag of leftover
beads I had given her from the previous Tuesday and replied, ‘My doctor helped me with making the snake.’
I took the beads and placed them on the table, along with the five or so craft bags that I now had to take into
the playroom. I set up my supplies and arranged the crafts in a circle around the table. ‘Look, you already
got a few children’, Maggie said. There was Bianca, Aliyah, a little boy (four years old) who I soon found
out’s name was Christian, and a seven-year old boy whose name was Andy. ‘Let’s see..’ I said. ‘I brought
along with me some masks..’ I didn’t get to say anything else, really, because the response from the kids
was too overwhelming. They were like, ‘Yeahhhh! Masks!’
Wow..I thought. Maybe my mom’s opinion was good. This time, anyways. Oh, and thank goodness I
had bought that three-pack of masks earlier that morning-I didn’t know exactly how many I had altogether. I
started spreading the masks’ accessories around the table, which included colorful pompons, rhinestones,
bags of assorted feathers, tiny crystal and heart beads. Already, I made such a mess, and I guess this is true:
The messier your craft gets, the more kids will love it. -quoted by Maggie. Haha. I asked each kid what mask
he/she wanted and passed them out-I had both black and white masks. The two boys picked the black and
the two girls, the white. I positioned myself around the little kiddie table and took a seat. I swear, I almost
broke the chair. But yes, I sat down and took a white mask and then started to pick out the accessories that I
wanted to put on the mask. First I picked out a red pompon, and with enough glue, it finally stuck on. I
continued my craft with some black and pink feathers and some more pompons, followed by some purple
crystal rhinestones.
To the left of me, seven-year old Andy was diligently working on his mask-he had already glued
black feathers on and red and green pompons. His was definitely beating mine in the best-looking contest.
He had some difficulty with the gluestick keeping the pompons on, and there was only one Elmer’s Gluestick I
had broughten, so Maggie left the room and returned with a few sticks of high-durability Elmer’s Glue.
The kids looked very concentrated as they started at their masks, wondering what to put on next. To
the right of me, sisters Bianca and Aliyah were working on separate white masks. Aliyah, just like the time
before, was sort of shy, and at first didn’t want to construct anything. Yet her older sister, Bianca, was
already intriguingly working on hers. She had already decorated it with feathers and heart buttons, and had
next discovered a good use for the teeny-tiny leftover beads I had found no use for: they could be used as
glitter. So, she dumped a whole bunch of glue on her mask, and bombs away!- poured the beads onto the
mask. Amazingly, they stuck, and she squealed with happiness.
While Bianca was constructing her creation, three-year old Christian, the little boy from across the
table, was working on his, with the help of his mother. Christian’s mother also had a younger baby, probably
only a few months old, hooked up to an I.V. Christian had already glued numerous feathers onto the black
mask, and had decorated most of the mask with silver and purple glitter. His looked amazing. How do these
kids do it? That, I do not know.
Finally, I guess Aliyah felt compelled to start her own creation, because she murmured to her mother
about starting her own mask; and, seizing a few feathers, instantly went to work at assembling her own
special mask.
The mask project went on for a good forty-five minutes or so, until the kids were done. Now what? I
thought. Andy saw the beads that Bianca had placed on the table and said, ‘Oooh, I want to make one of
those!’ I was thrilled. One thing that I’m really good at, (and one of the only things), is making beaded
friends. You name an animal, I could..(probably)..make it. ‘Oh, that’s great’, I replied. ‘Which one do you
want to make?’
While Christian was coloring a picture of Spiderman, he overheard what we were talking about and
grew interested; along with him, so did Bianca-who wanted to not only have a snake, but a frog as well. I
gave the string to Andy to make his alligator, and Christian and Bianca, their frog. Again, Aliyah sat out of
this one. I started Andy off with his alligator, instructing him on how many beads he’d need, and how to
properly put them on the string. One by one, he started forming the alligator, with my instruction, of course.
While this was going on, I was helping Christian and Bianca make their frog. I’m a lot less experienced at
making the frog (I only started making it about two weeks ago), but I was already really good at it. Since
Christian was but of three, he needed a lot of help, so he was helping his mother put the beads on the string;
then she’d do the proper putting together. Bianca was next to me and along with my mother, they were
beading her frog. But help? Nah. Bianca barely needed it. She could follow the example frog really well, I was
surprised. The only thing she needed help on was the feet, which would be confusing for someone who’d not
used to making this type of beaded friends. Oh, and Bianca said she was giving it to her mother, as a
birthday present. ‘Today’s my mom’s birthday-I didn’t get her anything, but I’ll give her this. She’s twenty-six
today. Before, she was twenty-five. That’s really really young.’
Instructing the kids (and the mother) with the beaded animals took a good amount of time, and by
the time they were done with their finished products, I only had about twenty or so minutes to go before I
left. Then Andy had to go to get some procedure done, but he’d be back. Around that time, Christian had to
leave, so I said goodbye and thought of what to do next. Hmm. Then I remembered: the purse! Since there
was only Bianca and Aliyah left with me (at the moment), and they were both girls, I decided that’d be an
excellent idea. ‘Want to make a purse?’ I asked. ‘Yeahhh!’ Bianca replied. Of course, Aliyah was shy and just
hid in her mother’s arms.
Bianca and Aliyah had to leave soon, so Bianca took over on the purse and started writing her name
on both sides of the tank-top shaped purse with a glitter pen that I had bought. It looked nice so far. Then,
she glued some glitter and beads on it. It was coming along very nicely. What a cute idea, I thought. I have to
get more of these purses! Then, my mom helped Bianca cut out a heart with the purple glittery felt paper,
and Bianca glued it on. What a good way to use that paper, I thought. I didn’t think it’d come in handy, but I
guess it did. It added an extra sparkle to the already glittery purse.
Remember that odd zebra fur I had bought off of the clearance racks? Well, Bianca saw that and
started going crazy. She cut out a big chunk of the black-and-white striped fur and glued it to the bottom of
the purse. ‘You can make fringe with that,’ my mom said. ‘Do you want to? It’d look nice.’ ‘YeahH!’ Bianca
said. So she cut strips of it out at the bottom and flicked it with a whirl. ‘Oh wow,’ she said. ‘That’s nice.’
The purse craft went on for a few more minutes, but then abruptly, Bianca and Aliyah had to leave,
just as Andy came back in. Saying goodbye once again to the girls (because I had just seen them the
previous Tuesday), I sat back down at the kiddie-sized table and helped Andy finish his alligator. There
wasn’t enough string left to continue the craft, so I had to fix that; then, when he was all done, I helped him
attach a keyring to it. Voile! He was now done.
Looking around the room and seeing that he was the only one left (obviously), Andy then asked me
if I had any more paper plates left; he had seen the example sheep I had made out of two paper plates and
some cotton balls. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I bought three bags of paper plates.’ And indeed, I had. The mask idea I
had done before? Well, I guess he wasn’t done with making masks. He wanted to do more. So, I gave him a
paper plate, and he got ahold of the zebra fur and, with assistance cutting a big piece of it off, heavily glued
it down to the bottom of the paper plate. ‘This can be like the fur in the back,’ he said. ‘What a great idea!’ I
said. He then finished it off by asking me to punch paper holes on the sides, so he could then attach two
green pipe cleaners to the holes. That would then be the ‘string’ for the mask.
Almost as soon as we had started, it was time for us to leave, and Andy abruptly left the mask on the
countertop to dry, and left the room. Pleased with how everything had went, I realized a lady was talking to
Maggie, a lady who I heard mention the word ‘coloring books.’ ‘Sorry,’ Maggie said. ‘We barely have any left,
and what there is is on the third floor.’ As I was attempting to pack away my things, I went over and said, ‘I
have tons of coloring pages that I got and printed out. I have Spiderman, Blue’s Clues, Shrek..’ ‘Oh, really?’
said the lady. ‘That’s nice-it’s for a litte girl, though. I don’t know exactly what she’d like.’ ‘I have Lizzie
McGuire,’ I replied. ‘Ooh!’ said the lady. ‘My daughter’s up there in her room, bored to death, with a long
procedure ahead of her, and she lovvves to color. Lizzie’s one of her favorites.’
As I left the hospital, I thought to myself, Wow, this went exceptionally well today. All I have to do is
to just get more purses and masks!
Place: Janet Weis Children’s Hospital
Time: 1:30-3:20 p.m.
Ahh..what a day. Today is the third day that I’ve visited the Janet Weis Children’s Hospital
(successfully). My day started at seven-thirty when I woke up and showered. My boyfriend of a year and a
half and best friend, Eric, came by and drove me to the local craft store, JoAnn Fabrics, where I loaded up on
even more supplies for the kids.
The day before, my mother had gone to JoAnn’s without me (!! the horror) and had bought supplies
for the one idea we had not agreed on- masks. My mom thought it would be the best idea, I, on the other
hand, thought it would be too scary. I don’t know. But yeah, she had bought several plastic masks, along
with bags of feathers, stars and rhinestones, for the kids to decorate the masks with. Once I saw the mask
supplies, though, I changed my mind. Hmm..maybe it would be a good idea. It looked very neat and
interesting to do; even to a seventeen-year old-me!.
So at JoAnn’s this morning, I was eager to begin the mask craft. I bought a three-pack more of plain
white plastic masks, including more feathers and assorted cotton-ey balls. Also, I bought (just in case I didn’t
have enough fabric for pillows), I bought a yard of Spiderman and Spongebob fabric, each. The kids’ll
definitely love this, I thought. They always go NUTS over the pillows. Especially ones with Spongebob and
Spiderman? I better prep myself.
Along with those supplies, I also bought additional stuffing for the pillows, a small plain denim purse
(in case the little girls-or boys-wanted to decorate it), and one..very..odd thing. Out of plain curiosity, I was
rifling through the clearance bins and found a whole jumble and heap of thick zebra fur; something I normally
wouldn’t even bother taking a second glance at. But something told me to stop and take it-hey, the kids
would like it. Kids can be a bit strange. So in addition to the other supplies I had already bought, I added the
zebra fur onto them. They could make something out of this, I told myself. What? I would soon find out.
The ride up to Danville went..unusually..quick. Assuming there would be traffic and construction, like
there always was, my mother and I set out at a little before quarter to twelve, when again, we didn’t have to
get there until one-thirty. But we would soon be surprised. There was absolutely no traffic; there was
construction, but it was few and far in between; and the ride took us up to Danville with almost an hour to
spare.
We stopped at the local McDonald’s and actually ate in the restaurant, taking as much time as
possible to take up the hour. Hey, rather be early than late, right? When it was time to leave, we left for the
hospital, a mile away. When we got there, we still had fifteen minutes to spare.
I pressed the elevator key to the third floor and held my breath. I hate elevators. My mother and I
got up to the third floor, waited for awhile, and Maggie, the special events coordinator, was nowhere in sight.
Hmm..did I forget to tell her I’d be coming twice this week? No..she wasn’t in on Tuesday, but another
coordinator was; and she knew I was going to. I assumed she would’ve told her. But anyways, my
nervousness gathered as the minutes slowly went by.
Finally, Maggie got off of the elevator and said that instead of the third floor, we would be gathering
in the second floor gameroom/playroom that day because some of the children, due to their illnesses, would
not be able to venture up to the third floor. Thank goodness, I sighed to myself, she’s here. We arrived at
the second floor playroom, a room identical to the third floor’s except for the absence of the filled fishtank,
and opened up the door. Maggie then told me then that there’d be two of the same patients I had the last
time I was there, just three days previously. ‘Bianca and Aliyah?’ my mother asked. Yes, Maggie said.
I opened up the door farther and stepped in. A smiling Bianca came over with a bag of leftover
beads I had given her from the previous Tuesday and replied, ‘My doctor helped me with making the snake.’
I took the beads and placed them on the table, along with the five or so craft bags that I now had to take into
the playroom. I set up my supplies and arranged the crafts in a circle around the table. ‘Look, you already
got a few children’, Maggie said. There was Bianca, Aliyah, a little boy (four years old) who I soon found
out’s name was Christian, and a seven-year old boy whose name was Andy. ‘Let’s see..’ I said. ‘I brought
along with me some masks..’ I didn’t get to say anything else, really, because the response from the kids
was too overwhelming. They were like, ‘Yeahhhh! Masks!’
Wow..I thought. Maybe my mom’s opinion was good. This time, anyways. Oh, and thank goodness I
had bought that three-pack of masks earlier that morning-I didn’t know exactly how many I had altogether. I
started spreading the masks’ accessories around the table, which included colorful pompons, rhinestones,
bags of assorted feathers, tiny crystal and heart beads. Already, I made such a mess, and I guess this is true:
The messier your craft gets, the more kids will love it. -quoted by Maggie. Haha. I asked each kid what mask
he/she wanted and passed them out-I had both black and white masks. The two boys picked the black and
the two girls, the white. I positioned myself around the little kiddie table and took a seat. I swear, I almost
broke the chair. But yes, I sat down and took a white mask and then started to pick out the accessories that I
wanted to put on the mask. First I picked out a red pompon, and with enough glue, it finally stuck on. I
continued my craft with some black and pink feathers and some more pompons, followed by some purple
crystal rhinestones.
To the left of me, seven-year old Andy was diligently working on his mask-he had already glued
black feathers on and red and green pompons. His was definitely beating mine in the best-looking contest.
He had some difficulty with the gluestick keeping the pompons on, and there was only one Elmer’s Gluestick I
had broughten, so Maggie left the room and returned with a few sticks of high-durability Elmer’s Glue.
The kids looked very concentrated as they started at their masks, wondering what to put on next. To
the right of me, sisters Bianca and Aliyah were working on separate white masks. Aliyah, just like the time
before, was sort of shy, and at first didn’t want to construct anything. Yet her older sister, Bianca, was
already intriguingly working on hers. She had already decorated it with feathers and heart buttons, and had
next discovered a good use for the teeny-tiny leftover beads I had found no use for: they could be used as
glitter. So, she dumped a whole bunch of glue on her mask, and bombs away!- poured the beads onto the
mask. Amazingly, they stuck, and she squealed with happiness.
While Bianca was constructing her creation, three-year old Christian, the little boy from across the
table, was working on his, with the help of his mother. Christian’s mother also had a younger baby, probably
only a few months old, hooked up to an I.V. Christian had already glued numerous feathers onto the black
mask, and had decorated most of the mask with silver and purple glitter. His looked amazing. How do these
kids do it? That, I do not know.
Finally, I guess Aliyah felt compelled to start her own creation, because she murmured to her mother
about starting her own mask; and, seizing a few feathers, instantly went to work at assembling her own
special mask.
The mask project went on for a good forty-five minutes or so, until the kids were done. Now what? I
thought. Andy saw the beads that Bianca had placed on the table and said, ‘Oooh, I want to make one of
those!’ I was thrilled. One thing that I’m really good at, (and one of the only things), is making beaded
friends. You name an animal, I could..(probably)..make it. ‘Oh, that’s great’, I replied. ‘Which one do you
want to make?’
While Christian was coloring a picture of Spiderman, he overheard what we were talking about and
grew interested; along with him, so did Bianca-who wanted to not only have a snake, but a frog as well. I
gave the string to Andy to make his alligator, and Christian and Bianca, their frog. Again, Aliyah sat out of
this one. I started Andy off with his alligator, instructing him on how many beads he’d need, and how to
properly put them on the string. One by one, he started forming the alligator, with my instruction, of course.
While this was going on, I was helping Christian and Bianca make their frog. I’m a lot less experienced at
making the frog (I only started making it about two weeks ago), but I was already really good at it. Since
Christian was but of three, he needed a lot of help, so he was helping his mother put the beads on the string;
then she’d do the proper putting together. Bianca was next to me and along with my mother, they were
beading her frog. But help? Nah. Bianca barely needed it. She could follow the example frog really well, I was
surprised. The only thing she needed help on was the feet, which would be confusing for someone who’d not
used to making this type of beaded friends. Oh, and Bianca said she was giving it to her mother, as a
birthday present. ‘Today’s my mom’s birthday-I didn’t get her anything, but I’ll give her this. She’s twenty-six
today. Before, she was twenty-five. That’s really really young.’
Instructing the kids (and the mother) with the beaded animals took a good amount of time, and by
the time they were done with their finished products, I only had about twenty or so minutes to go before I
left. Then Andy had to go to get some procedure done, but he’d be back. Around that time, Christian had to
leave, so I said goodbye and thought of what to do next. Hmm. Then I remembered: the purse! Since there
was only Bianca and Aliyah left with me (at the moment), and they were both girls, I decided that’d be an
excellent idea. ‘Want to make a purse?’ I asked. ‘Yeahhh!’ Bianca replied. Of course, Aliyah was shy and just
hid in her mother’s arms.
Bianca and Aliyah had to leave soon, so Bianca took over on the purse and started writing her name
on both sides of the tank-top shaped purse with a glitter pen that I had bought. It looked nice so far. Then,
she glued some glitter and beads on it. It was coming along very nicely. What a cute idea, I thought. I have to
get more of these purses! Then, my mom helped Bianca cut out a heart with the purple glittery felt paper,
and Bianca glued it on. What a good way to use that paper, I thought. I didn’t think it’d come in handy, but I
guess it did. It added an extra sparkle to the already glittery purse.
Remember that odd zebra fur I had bought off of the clearance racks? Well, Bianca saw that and
started going crazy. She cut out a big chunk of the black-and-white striped fur and glued it to the bottom of
the purse. ‘You can make fringe with that,’ my mom said. ‘Do you want to? It’d look nice.’ ‘YeahH!’ Bianca
said. So she cut strips of it out at the bottom and flicked it with a whirl. ‘Oh wow,’ she said. ‘That’s nice.’
The purse craft went on for a few more minutes, but then abruptly, Bianca and Aliyah had to leave,
just as Andy came back in. Saying goodbye once again to the girls (because I had just seen them the
previous Tuesday), I sat back down at the kiddie-sized table and helped Andy finish his alligator. There
wasn’t enough string left to continue the craft, so I had to fix that; then, when he was all done, I helped him
attach a keyring to it. Voile! He was now done.
Looking around the room and seeing that he was the only one left (obviously), Andy then asked me
if I had any more paper plates left; he had seen the example sheep I had made out of two paper plates and
some cotton balls. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I bought three bags of paper plates.’ And indeed, I had. The mask idea I
had done before? Well, I guess he wasn’t done with making masks. He wanted to do more. So, I gave him a
paper plate, and he got ahold of the zebra fur and, with assistance cutting a big piece of it off, heavily glued
it down to the bottom of the paper plate. ‘This can be like the fur in the back,’ he said. ‘What a great idea!’ I
said. He then finished it off by asking me to punch paper holes on the sides, so he could then attach two
green pipe cleaners to the holes. That would then be the ‘string’ for the mask.
Almost as soon as we had started, it was time for us to leave, and Andy abruptly left the mask on the
countertop to dry, and left the room. Pleased with how everything had went, I realized a lady was talking to
Maggie, a lady who I heard mention the word ‘coloring books.’ ‘Sorry,’ Maggie said. ‘We barely have any left,
and what there is is on the third floor.’ As I was attempting to pack away my things, I went over and said, ‘I
have tons of coloring pages that I got and printed out. I have Spiderman, Blue’s Clues, Shrek..’ ‘Oh, really?’
said the lady. ‘That’s nice-it’s for a litte girl, though. I don’t know exactly what she’d like.’ ‘I have Lizzie
McGuire,’ I replied. ‘Ooh!’ said the lady. ‘My daughter’s up there in her room, bored to death, with a long
procedure ahead of her, and she lovvves to color. Lizzie’s one of her favorites.’
As I left the hospital, I thought to myself, Wow, this went exceptionally well today. All I have to do is
to just get more purses and masks!