Camp,day 1

Today was the first day of the week-long camp for cancer patients and their siblings{ages 3-8} I'm helping at. Even though I've volunteered at the children's hospital for the last two and a half years,it was my first volunteering at the camp.

I was the Buddy{meaning responsible for all day}for two 7 year old boys named Rafael and Elijah. They were very cute and sweet all morning. They sat when they were supposed to sit and did what they were supposed to do when it was supposed to be done. When I told them it was snack time, Rafael even gave me a big hug and said,"you're my favorite buddy!". I thought we were all meant for each other but then the afternoon rolled around and I started to think different things.

Let's just say they became your average 7 year old boys.

I may pride myself at being some experienced babysitter who can handle just about anything that comes my way but there's a small distraction at camp that I never have to deal with while babysitting: his name is Jared and he's the only boy Buddy. Once Rafael and Elijah realized there was a boy who would pick them up and pull and push them all over the place, it was goodbye, Sarah! Both Rafael and Elijah are sweet boys, but they couldn't resist being with all the other boys 1,000% of the time. Consequently, I spent the next 4 hours chasing them around, trying not to lose them, and wishing for goodness sake that more guys would have signed up! I'm sure Jared spent the whole day thinking about the fact he was the most popular person at the hospital. I may or may not{leaning heavily towards may}have temporarily lost one or both boys more than once. It's not easy to keep track of two children who are running all over the place when there are 25+ other children around. As I found out, nobody was really surprised about what was going on in our trio; everyone else was very sympathetic to my plight. I don't want it to sound like I didn't like it because I did, it was just a lot of work. I think today would have been a little difficult anyways just because it was my first day.

And what did we do for fun?

We had a puppet show{some of the jokes the puppeteer told were so over our heads there wasn't any way the kids got it}. A reptile man came with a slithery, slimy collection of snakes, frogs and lizards. Elijah and Rafael had a major show-down every time he showed a new animal.

R: "I've held a lizard before."

E: "I've held a snake before."

R: "Well, I've held a poisonous snake!"
E: "Oh yeah! I've held TWO poisonous snakes!"

R: complete silence

We also played Wiffle ball with these two gentlemen:

{They were very popular among the ladies.} They play baseball on the AAA ball team of the Boston Red Sox. You may have heard of them. The highlight of my day was that I was SO the manager of our team{said team consisted of 9 boys who insisted on standing right behind the batter within inches of getting smacked in the head every time the bat was swung}during the game. My newest claim to fame is that I played baseball with the {almost}Red Sox, oh yes I did. If only I had known they were going to be there, I would have worn my Red Sox earrings.

Tomorrow we're decorating giant giraffe gingerbread cookies{a giraffe is the camp's mascot}and having a bubble party. I've never been to an official bubble party, but I can imagine that it probably involves large amounts of very large bubbles. The real question for tomorrow is will Rafael and Elijah be stuck with the apparently boring Sarah, or will they join the ranks of happy Jared buddies?