My Last Monday

Well, today was the first day of my last week here at Tutova and I am now the only volunteer. It was a rather quiet day. I took just 7 kids into the playroom in the morning but ended up with 10 in the afternoon. Everyone has changed cribs over the weekend which is a bit confusing as I finally knew exactly where each child went. But as one of the Cribs broke last week, and some of the toddlers have left the clinic it was time for a move about. Also all three of the babies who were in the isolation room are now out in the regular bedrooms with the other babies. This is so exciting. I felt awful having to leave them in the isolation room all day. Now they get to come out and play.

But this did confuse things with the cribs this morning. Abel and Mihaela have moved out of the room across from the play room and Silvia has moved in. Abel and Mihaela are now in the toddler beds (which I think they are still adjusting to as neither of them would go to sleep at nap time today. Sammy is in Silvia's old crib and Florin is in Sammy's old crib. Little Stefan now occupies Florin's old crib and Little Mihaela and Paula occupy the two formerly empty cribs in that back bedroom.

So I guess that gives you a picture of how confusing it was this morning trying to find my babies. On top of that Alex, Ramona, and Maiastra were simply not in their beds at all. I wondered what had happened to them but was unable to ask as Dan had an errand to run (his daughter Delia was sick and he needed to go drop off a throat swab for testing at a different hospital) and no one else at the clinic speaks English. A little before noon they all showed up again and when Dan returned I asked where they had been. He informed me that they had been with two ladies who are now going to be coming once a week to work with the special needs kids (Sorin was with them as well). They had been in the front room the whole time, I just never thought to look there as usually that room is used only by the toddlers and sometimes not at all in the morning. Dan wasn't sure if these ladies were from a private organization or the state dept. or what, but supposedly they will be back next Monday to work with the kids some more.

I spent much of my afternoon holding little Mihaela who will be one month old on Wednesday. She is the sweetest thing, I'm so glad she can join us now in the playroom. She is really no trouble at all and will happily lay in your lap while you play with the other children. She does have a terrible diaper rash, not as bad as some of our kids last time (by which I mean it is not bleeding) but probably the worst I've seen this trip. Needless to say I am now making sure she gets changed at least twice as often as the other kids; and I let go diaper free for the majority of the afternoon to air out the area. I just held her on my lap with a diaper underneath her. Hopefully her rash will be looking better soon.