Hospital handwork!

We are keeping it crafty around here :) This is a "snake" Toucie is making by stringing squares of cheerful wool felt onto a length of embroidery thread with a needle...a long term project that is picked up for a few minutes each day.

Wet-on-wet watercolor painting is always soothing to do and soothing to gaze upon.

Here are some watercolors made for Mama...I used them to print out some poems, blessings and verses for our upcoming year.

Any tissue paper that crosses this threshold soon finds itself refashioned into big, pleated flowers! We have several of these now and they brighten up our hospital room quite a bit (Toucie's immune system is so low that she cannot have real flowers in the room).

Healing is happening every day. We have found our way to a feeling of ease and relative comfort here at the hospital. Our good friend "Rhythm" has asserted itself once again.

One of the chemotherapy drugs has an upsetting side effect: loss of dexterity in the hands and feet (called Neuropathy). After 2 weeks of treatment, Toucie is beginning to experience a bit of this. One of the ways of staving off this degradation is movement and use of the digits.  Thanks to Waldorf Education, our family is already conditioned to mindfully incorporate movement into our daily life...whew, one less strange, new thing I need to learn. So, all those lovely kindergarten elements that are so good for all our young children...like, finger knitting, stringing beads, sanding wood, molding clay or beeswax, wet felting, carding wool, gripping crayons, chopping veggies, peeling fruit, kneading bread, knotting string, catching beanbags, playing finger plays, etc...are going to be like magic medicine for our Toucie.

If anyone has suggestions for creative ways to help little fingers and toes get some excercise, please let me know! We had a footbath recently with marbles in the basin and we picked them up with our toes :)
I'm thinking about things like jacks and yoyos, but those might be a little too old for her just yet. Any ideas?