Day Ten (3/10)

Breakfast here is always a surprise; this morning we had chicken fingers. Dan met us at the hotel and drove some of us (Cindy and Me) to the clinic, while the others (David and Cathy) walked. When we walked in the door we were greeted by some new faces: Ionella’s parents! They spent three hours with Ionella in the hallway and the pre-school, and seemed so happy to see her. You could tell though that they were a bit sad not to be taking her home right then (they will wait until after her second cleft palate surgery). I went right into the isolation room and picked up Ema while holding Maria’s hand. They were both crying when we got there, so I tried to do damage control and make them happy. Maria was wearing one of the outfits I brought; it has dog feet and says “I love hugs”, and looked very cute on her. And Ema had on one of my favorite (boy) outfits with a dinosaur. I spent a while in there, and got to feed Ema her bottle, before going back to the non-mobile room. The kids were tired, but seemed happy enough. Alina has been very cute lately, I like to lie down and put her in the crawling position on my chest so she makes better eye contact. I’ve gotten her to call me “mama” in her cute little voice (a lot of people have never heard her talk), and today she started giving me kisses (the Romanian word for kiss is ‘poop’). “Alina kisses” involve her leaning over while on my chest and slobbering all over my face, very cute, but very slimy. After our lunch break, Marius threw up, and seemed to be feeling pretty gross. The doctor was already coming over to talk to the nurse, so they brought Marius to him, but her thought it was just the heat in the bedroom, so her got to come back to the playroom. The afternoon went by fast. I practiced standing and walking with Cristi (he’s getting good!), sitting with Marius and Gabriela, funny faces with “little” Andreea, and got more kisses from Alina. I also made frequent trips to the isolation room to visit Ema-Elena and Maria. At the end of the day I visited Ionella, Ioana, and Elena, in the pre-school rooms and got lots of hugs and requests to be tossed into the air. Tonight we went shopping and out to dinner in Barlad. We bought books and toys of the kids, and lots of snacks at the Plus for ourselves. Then we had a good dinner filled with lots of humor. We were told that Lea-Celine is back in Tutova, and we are really excited to get to see her again tomorrow! Now we are just missing our other sweet Maria.