Day Eleven (An Almost Full Non-Mobile Room)

This morning when we got to the clinic, Alexandra was being taken out in a snowsuit to a car. We asked what was happening, and were told that she was going to the hospital for tests. Then, I went back to put my stuff in the non-mobile room and look for Lea Celine. She wasn’t in the playroom, or her normal bedroom, so then I went to the isolation room. I found her in the corner bed, seeming a little out of it, but she quickly perked up! I picked up Ema then stood by Celine’s crib to talk to her. She was very smiley and started talking again. Then we visited Maria, and fixed her head pillow. When Mihaela got to the clinic she came in to visit Celine, and after asking the aides about the fact that she still had a cast on (they apparently just put on a new one with a different angle), we were told that we could take her and Ema to the playroom! It felt great to walk out of the isolation room with our babies and bring them back to the normal room. With only four volunteers, there's usually just one of us in each room at a time because the others are outside or in the hallway with kids. Now that we have so many kids in the non-mobile room it can be crazy! I held Ema most of the morning while playing with the other kids. She actually seems more agreeable to the different holding positions now than in August, even though she’s sick. Although she has a terrifying new trick that she does when she wants out of the swing where she starts to cry then stops moving a lot and turns reddish-purple until she’s picked up. I was alone with the nine non-mobiles when she first did this, and I momentarily freaked out, but once I picked her up she calmed down quickly. She did it again though once in the afternoon. We had Mihaela too for most of the morning, and she was a terror. She went around tipping over empty bouncer seats and then aggressively bouncing the one’s with babies in them, we eventually had to put her in the jumperoo to contain her. We have been swapping family pictures with the aides, which has been fun. After lunch it was more of the same, with the addition of more visiting mobile children. It’s still VERY hot in the clinic, so we had to unzip and take the kids arms out of the sleepers. At the end the aides asked us to take some pictures of them with the kids, they were very cute.