Making the Hospital Stay Fun

I have to say we again had another one of these crazy fun hospital days. As most kids are nowadays the only child in the family, when they are sick, the whole family, including the grandparents are all around comforting and spoiling their child and yet the little ones can be still crying. We know it is impossible for our orphaned children to have the whole family around them, but interestingly, our group has the most laughters and fun time together, everyone's helping each other like one family. What's more interesting, we drew so many other people's attention, like we are the happiest group in the hospital and we brought the happy atmosphere into this supposed-to-be boring place.

We had a fashion show in the hallway today. Guess who's the model - Chloe! Chloe had a really big and painful surgery. After laying in bed for over 10 days, she is finally allowed to stand up. We can't wait to dress her up and she definitely enjoys cute dresses, including this one from today. She enjoyed showing off and "yelling" for attention from audience. So we took her out to the hallway while she still has the urine bag. Her caregiver was carrying it for her but she looked at it and baby talked the caregiver to give her the bag instead. Once she got the bag, she carried it like it's her little purse, happily she was ready to pose for pics! You can imagine all the audience she drew in the hallway and everyone gave her applause. Some other little crying babies even started to laugh in their parents' arms.

Jie is finally feeling better after going through the most painful first few days. Her parents already put him on the pillow while he's laying on his tummy. They took him around for little tour here and there. We also had a good time blowing bubbles, even tho Jie had to lay on his tummy, his eyes followed the bubbles and from time to time he was cracking up and had this loud and clear baby laugh. The parents are so kind that they even tried to help out our orphaned patients, such as feeding or holding, the father even volunteered to go out to buy food for the caregivers who couldn't go out. The whole group is absolutely one great team, helping each other out.

We love to see children being happy during their hospital stay because hospital stay is supposed to be painful and boring, but we can always try to dig out so much fun to make it easy & fun for their stay. I really hope each hospital stay can turn into a happy experience instead in these kids' memories.

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