Update 2/1/10

Monday morning we had breakfast at 8 a.m., then Dan joined us for the message of the day and journal. We headed over to the clinic in time for the first bottle and spread out around the rooms. I ended up alone in the non-mobile playroom with 6/7 kids for most of the morning, but had help from Evan and one of the aides. The babies I worked with in the morning were: Paula (3), Ema-Elena (2 on 2/14), Petre (10 months), Cristi (3), Roxana (3 months), Denisa Elena (2 months), and Daria Roxana (4 months). We were also visited by Lea Celine for a while (3 on 2/4). I brought two of the hairbands over today, and the aides and I played around with them on the non-mobiles in the morning. Denisa-Elena’s mom visited early on in the morning; then the twins. Roxana and Andreea’s. mom, grandma, and brother visited, and were very friendly to us. They even let me take a picture of them with the babies, and they asked us questions about their kids’ development.

We went back to the hotel for lunch, then headed right back to the hospital for a tour of the facilities with Dr. Delia. She said she will find out more for me about when Ionut will be getting back from the hospital, and some of us tried asking Dan if we could visit him, so we’ll see what happens. Dr. Delia told us that Daria-Roxana will be going for her cleft lip surgery next week, and her mom is actually going to go with her and stay in the hospital with her. It started snowing as we were walking to the clinic, and snowed about 6 inches in the three hours we were there! And it’s supposed to snow most of the week! We held some of the kids up to the windows so they could see it, but unfortunately we can’t take them out in it.

We now stay at the clinic until 6:15 p.m. for the afternoon shift instead of doing a third shift later at night. In the afternoon/evening I worked mostly with the same babies as the morning, but also spent a while in the toddler room with Alina, Ion, Sammy, Alex, and Andreea. My evening ended with Andreea projectile vomiting all over the entire rug after eating paper from a coloring book and drinking her bottle too fast, and all the other kids ran straight forward, so I had to hold them all back and get help at the same time. We ended up morning all the kids to the other playroom, while Dan and an aide cleaned the floor. Then we walked back to hotel in the blizzard, but it was beautiful with all the snow and the Christmas looking lights criss-crossed over the road in front of the hospital. When we got to the hotel we all looked like we’d spent days out in the snow, but we warmed up and had dinner as a group before parting ways back to our rooms (and a drive home for Dan).