Our first Day out

We had a half day of therapy this morning and Jacob worked on it kind of like he knew he was getting out of the hospital for the day.  He was only half into it.  He did some walking like he was out for a slow Sunday stroll, and then the therapist thought he should try to work on stairs, so we went to the stairwell in the hospital.  Jacob took one look at the flight of stairs and then looked back at the therapist and had a look on his face like "You have got to be kidding me".  She even had to laugh.   He did half of the flight though (eventually) and finished all of his therapies without too much complaint.  After those were over though he looked pretty tired, so I put him down for a nap before lunch and our big day out.  He slept for 2 1/2 hours!  When he did wake up we had a visit from our friend Kristina while we were eating.  She was in town for the weekend and stopped by to say Hi. 

We finally got to leave the hospital at around 4pm.  Josh really wanted to take Jacob to see the Space Needle, so we decided OK, hoping that we would get lucky and there wouldn't be too many people (on a Saturday, Ya right!).  We got there and first they told us we could not take Jacob's stroller in, which could have been a problem, because obviously we would have had to carry him the whole time.  Then we told them he could not walk and we were on a day pass from the hospital, and she okay'ed it.  In fact, she told us to wait by one of the elevators inside for her.  She showed up and we got put straight on the elevator to the launch floor.  Then they asked us if we wanted to get our free photo, so we said "sure".  They then put us to the front of that line.  They then had us stand to the side for a couple of minutes.  To our surprise they put us on the very next elevator to the top.  NO lines to wait in and Rick had found out that the wait in line as at least half an hour long.

   The ride in the elevator was short, only 41 seconds and everyone seemed to be having a great time, except maybe me (I am afraid of heights).  I did OK, but I only went outside so I could get the photos taken (but I stayed away from the outside rail).  After a while of Joshua exploring all of the stuff and zooming in on things around Seattle, I was feeling hungry, so we decided to head down and go and get dinner.  We got on the elevator, and the ride down was probably the closest I have ever come to passing out.  If that elevator ride had been any longer they would have had to pick me up off the floor.  We stepped out into the gift shop and I went directly to a corner and sat down on the floor.  I think it was a combination of the dizzying speed down (and my fear of heights) and me needing something to eat, but I thought I was going to drop.  After a few minutes on the floor, I felt a bit better and we were able to finish in the gift shop and go to get our car. 

We then had to go get something to eat, so we headed back towards the hospital, or so we thought.  Rick took a wrong turn, and we ended up going south instead of north, and ended up in the wrong end of Seattle, so our short trip home took a bit longer than we had hoped.  We finally got back by the hospital and the Ronald McDonald house, and found a little Chinese restaurant to eat at.  It was yummy, and while we were there, we also found out that Jacob now really likes to use his voice in restaurants.  Before his surgery, he never made much of a peep when we were out to dinner.  Now after his surgery, he has decided that he needs to let everyone in the restaurants know he has a voice.  We are going to have to ask his speech therapist on Monday if there is a volume control on him.  Tomorrow, hopefully the weather will be nice, but we decided Jacob might like to see the zoo, so maybe one more trip there. 

A note about the photos:  The top one is the free one from the space needle  (obviously because when is Seattle really that sunny?).  The next one is the view of the city from the wall of the outside of the space needle. The next one is the boys, and Jacob was always more interested in everyone around him, but us.  The last one is what you get when you give your camera to a complete stranger to take the family photo, you get what you get (how do you get an auto focus camera out of focus anyway?).