Ben has never been a demanding kid.  He seems to take things as they come, but we have had to negotiate a few things with this hospital stay.   Anyways, this is Ben’s list of demands and my responses.

1.  I only eat Kraft dinner at home – you know I don’t eat it at the hospital.    (No, I didn’t know that;  otherwise I wouldn’t have ordered it for you the last 20 times.  I will not order it for you any more.)
2. I only eat pancakes in our land – not in Montreal.  (I also didn’t know that – same as above)
3. I only like to eat pasta with meat sauce, mini burgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, and chicken nuggets here – I don’t want to try new stuff (really?  aren’t you bored?  I know I am! And besides that – the only reason you like mini burgers is because I made you try them…hmmmm   Are you sure you don’t want to try the shepherds pie?)
4. I would like to eat dessert first (ya know what…if that’s what you want – go for it! – if I ever have screws in my head, I’m gonna eat desert first too)
5. I don’t want to eat vegetables – they look funny here. (Hmmmm….ok…fine.  They do look a bit funny, so ok – you don’t have to eat them, but the SECOND we get home – we go back to the one bite rule!)
6. I want to play lots of video games (ok, but for every game you play, you need to answer two spelling or sight words).
7. I don’t want to do homework (Ummmm….wrong!  You have to do homework – good try though. The screws in the head thing will only get you so far.)

So, there you have it.  We have negotiated our way to this point, and it seems to be working.  Ben is happy, but he is also working hard.

The doctor had a look at Ben’s x-rays and said they were ok, but they were hoping to see more correction in his lower curve (he has two major curves – we were never expecting anything amazing from the upper curve, but we were definitely hoping to see more improvement below. Our current plan is to do X-rays again next Thursday.  If there is still not a lot of movement, we will still plan to do surgery the following Monday (March 13th).   If we do see improvement in that lower curve, we may extend our traction period and postpone the surgery for a little while.  So, we’ll see what happens I guess.    

Grandma and Ben’s big sister Alecia are out for the weekend, so Ben is a little excited (to put it mildly).  Should be a fun weekend!