My Date with Joshua

I had the sweetest breakfast date with Joshua this morning. Bill better watch out, because Josh says and does all the right things. Move over babe, a younger man is taking your place!

I went to visit Elizabeth in the hospital this morning. She's doing great and taking the whole diabetes (type1) thing in stride. She chatted about all the different places that they had poked her and was very at ease with the whole thing. She had to eat up all her breakfast within a half an hour and then they counted up carbs to determine how much insulin to give her. Sheesh!

Scott and Sara seem to be doing pretty well with all this new information. I guess Scott has blogged about, but I haven't read that yet. I'm sure I only got a glimpse of how drastic life will change while I was visiting them. But anyway, back to Joshua...

Josh had said a couple of times while I was there that he was hungry and both his parents wanted to take him down to get something to eat. They did, however, need to stick around to talk to one of the 3 different people I saw come in to give directions in their new quest. It's not like Josh was starving or anything. In fact, he was pretty matter-of-fact about the whole thing and distracted by Handy Manny on the TV. (A bonus about staying in the hospital-unlimited TV time!) So I offered to take Josh down to the cafeteria for them and Sara was happy to let me. He was hesitant at first, but I had him take the money from his mom so he could pay.

Sweet Boy!! He held my hand all the way to the cafeteria as we looked for signs pointing us in the right direction. We passed a couple of bunnies and he said, "What are they doing here? Bunnies don't live in Arizona." We talked about how the Smith's had bunnies but he told me they died. See that? A man that is secure enough with his emotions that he can talk about a sensitive topic. Then we came to the train tracks that they are putting up. We looked and looked, but could not find a train for those tracks. We determined that the tracks must not be done yet so they couldn't let the train on. We followed the arrows and the word cafeteria and made our way down the hallways. Then we could smell the food. That was cute.

After we checked out the limited selection of breakfast items, we ended up over by the grill in line for some sausage. He still held my hand, and the money. A doctor smiled at us and said to Josh, "Oh, how nice. Are you taking your mom out to breakfast?" I clarified that I was not his mom, but indeed he was my date for the morning. The doctor talked with us off and on while conversing with the nurse next to him, and taking at least one phone call and answering a page. During this time Joshua and I were trying to determine what exactly he would like to eat. One sausage, two? Eggs? A Pancake? He definitely wanted some pudding and I'm not his mom so I can let him have a little, right? It's got milk in it. It's almost our turn to order so I asked him again what he wanted, "One egg? One or two sausages?" This is where the sweet manners of a kind date kick in. He clarified, "Two sausages, one for me and one for you. One egg. One pancake. Two drinks, one for me and one for you." Aaah, is your heart melting yet. I wasn't really planning on eating anything other than a little fruit, but who can resist that sweet boy?!

We got out grill stuff, I put some chocolate pudding in a 2 oz cup and Josh topped it with a grape. Lime Gatorade for breakfast, really? If I told you that was one of the better choices would you be surprised? I seriously couldn't find where the good-for-you drinks were. No milk or juice that I could see. Gatorade seemed the lesser of 2 evils, right after soda. I couldn't even see the water button on the soda machine. Of all the cafeterias I've been to (it's not many), hospital cafeterias seem to be lacking in basic nutritional choices. Should I be surprised at this, or is this exactly what is wrong with our society. I didn't bring any of this up with Josh though. I didn't want to get too political with him since it was our first date.

The doctor made another comment to us and the cashier was very helpful with his obvious lack of experience in money management. We "ate" a delightful breakfast with some more good conversation. The talk was mostly about his family and I could tell his thoughts were still with them. He didn't eat much, mostly pudding and some Gatorade, so we put a lid on the leftovers to take back to the room with us. This was not until he made sure I ate my sausage and offered me the other half of his pancake. He also expressed his concern when I had not had any of my drink yet.

Then he held my hand all the way back to the room.