Hospital fun

While Mom was in the hospital we spent plenty of time visiting. Luckily she was in the new Diamond wing of UMC which had been designed mainly for kids, except for the floor she was on, so Rachel had a ball playing. She would often come visit Grandma, then after a few minutes when she was bored Grandpa, or sometimes Jake if he was there, would take her to play. They had a library, a train, a dinosaur wall, and a few other things.

The coolest part was by far this wall that had an image projected on it, and motion sensors, so when you got close it responded to you. It rotated through several different images. There were kites for the kids to pretend to hold, and they would follow the kids, there was a wall of butterflies and a different one of lizards that would scatter when you would try to get close to "catch" them. There was a fog that would clear away so you could see when you got near, and there was a deer that would run by you, and if you got too far ahead or behind it would stop and look around until you came back close by. It was so cool. Here's a little video of Rachel at it:

Since the move from UMC into the rehab center at St. Joe's Rachel's visits are a lot shorter since the room is shared, so there's not as much room to just hang out and there's nothing cool to keep her occupied. But Annie still accompanies me most of the time. Mom hates that she can't hold her since that would be "bearing weight" on her arms, which is not allowed for several more weeks. This is as close as she's gotten lately:
Not too long and she'll be holding Annie to build her arm strength back up (Annie is getting to be quite the chunker). When she gets LOTS of muscles maybe she'll start lifting Jared to exercise those arms. Savannah and Jared, are coming back to Tucson in January to help out when Mom gets to go home. Todd will come, too, probably, when he can arrange his work so he can work remotely. Mom will do anything to get her grandkids to come visit, I guess. ;)