Hemi-Kids Picnic

We went to a picnic yesterday for kids who have had strokes. It was in Media, PA at Linvilla Orchards. We had lunch, fed a variety of different animals and went for a hayride. Dave even got some perennials to bring home for our garden!

Anna was one of the younger kids and she quickly made friends with a much older girl who played with her a lot of the day. She got a ton of exercise since she wanted to walk everywhere and the place had some hills to contend with. She had a great time with all of the kids and behaved wonderfully. She was so wind up from the day of fun that she was a bundle of energy for the first fifteen minutes of the car ride home. But exhaustion soon took over and she dozed for awhile in the car. She's not much of a car seat sleeper, but luckily she was content enough to hang out for the remaining forty-five minutes of our trip.

She was happy to get home and have some dinner and then played energetically until it was time for her to go to sleep. She went willingly and talked for awhile in her crib since she had a lot to tell 'everyone' back in her room. It's so funny to listen to her babble away in the dark until exhaustion finally takes over her. Unfortunately she still tends to wake up crying when she's gone a day without a nap. Luckily, it just takes a quick minute for me to cover her back up and tell her to calm down and go back to sleep. Even so, I'm looking forward to her outgrowing this slight interruption because I was really comfortable when she decided she needed a little help!

She woke again at 5 am, but this time she was simply laughing and babbling quietly to herself so I decided to leave her alone. Anna is not an early riser so I decided to let her have her fun and fall back to sleep without any intervention. She finally roused around 8:30 am ready for the day!

It was nice to spend some time with people in similar situations even though spending the majority of the day discussing therapies and other medical interventions was a little draining for me. Obviously we only had 4 hours to socialize and swap stories so I understand why this occurred, but I was happy when we all took a break and fed the animals together and went for a hayride. By then, everyone had had a chance to talk for awhile and was ready to just enjoy one another.

Everyone was really nice and open - I only wish we lived closer to someone especially to someone with a child Anna's age. I know once Anna starts school she will make a lot of friends since she is so social and so far pretty mild mannered (at least around other kids!). But I don't know what it will be like for her growing up a little different than the other kids in her class so it would be nice to have someone else a little more like her around. I guess only time will teach us how to deal with this kind of situation if and when it occurs.