Evan and the Babies: Hot and Cold

We spend the days inside the playroom sweating and then bundle up to go outside. The Romanians would say that is why I caught a cold, or that it is because I wash my hair in the morning. Forget about those germs. Anyway, I am feeling better but did buy some cold medicine at the pharmacy tonite when we went in to Barlad for shopping and dinner.

It was my turn to write about today in our team journal and I decided to change it up and wrote about the day backwards starting with tonight and then going to this morning. I'm not sure my brain is up to repeating that in this posting.

We did have a nice dinner in Barlad at a restaurant I hadn't been to before called Garamonda. We went to the Berlin market in the northern part of town to get a birthday cake for Daniela for tomorrow and the restaurant was near there. I had pizza vegetal and the vegetal included red peppers, olives, mushrooms, corn, carrrots and peas. It was actually quite tasty. Before going to dinner in addition to going to the farmacia we went and bought two plastic garbage cans for the clinic. The head nurse is giving us a list of more things to buy tomorrow so I can spend all my donation money before I leave.

Daria Roxana was back at the clinic when we arrived this morning. At first we thought maybe she didn't have her surgery because her cleft palate lip looked the same. We found out that they did the palate repair first rather than the usual doing the lip repair in the first surgery and the palate repair in a second surgery. Of course she is in the isolation room near the nurse's office along with Victor and Ion. Ion is up to his old tricks blowing kisses and trying to take his sleeper off. It was pinned when I went in there after lunch.

Found out that today (or was it yesterday?) is Maria Cleopatra's first year anniversary of being at the clinic. Apparently it is unusual for a baby with hydrocephalus to live this long. Her birthday is July 26, 2008 so that makes her almost 19 months old if I'm doing my math right. I was visiting with her after lunch when they brought the 3:00 bottle in and I had a hard time feeding her and went and got Caroline. When you get the nipple in her mouth most of the milk runs down her chin rather than going inside. Caroline said she had the same problem.

Twin Andreea was in isolation in her crib this morning but they let us take her into the playroom this afternoon. She has had a really runny nose so I guess she has the same cold the other babies (and I) have. This afternoon a bunch of the babies were shuttled one by one wrapped up in winter coats to the main hospital in front to see the visiting doctor. It was a bit unclear to me why the doctor didn't just come back to the clinic building instead of the aides walking back and forth with sick babies in the cold. Ours is not to reason why.

Cristi stood for longer than I've ever seen him stand today. I "walked" him over holding his fingers to see Petre in the jumperoo. Petre is his buddy and the only other boy in the room. Crisit stood there looking at Petre for the longest time even when I let go of his hands and he was just kind of leaning against my legs. A few times his knees started to buckle and rather than doing his usual dropping to the floor he straightened right up. Usually he is on his back on the floor laughing to himself or hanging on to the bouncy chairs looking at the babies and it is hard to get him engaged doing something else so these small steps are noticeable.

And Gaby who likes to put her chin and face on a ball while you pound on it (so she can feel the vibrations) actually took to banging on the ball herself a few times today. Haven't seen that before either! Also, Denisa sat in the bumper chair for quite awhile looking at twin Roxana and everyone around her.

I visited the mobile room but neglected to bring my camera so no pix of those kids today. I did my usual bouncing them on my legs and threw Alina up in the air (she weighs 12 pounds) and danced around with the others. Alexandra gets right in line for these events as she loves being jiggled and tickled. Apparently her leg is bothering her as she hasn't been walking.

It is interesting to watch these kids progress and then sometimes take a step or two backwards or go through "stages." For example, Daniela who was always smiling in October is now falling apart and crying more - I think when she gets tired or hungry but also when she needs attention. And Lea Celine another usually happy camper is also needing more attention and starting to rival Paula for loudest screamer in the group. (Paula still wins that one.)

Enough updates and here are some pix.