Thursday, October 5, 2006

Well, we went to Dancu and nothing really interesting happened. I got to read my book (“Hole in the Flag”) along the way, which was nice. The day at Dancu was pretty good too. I spent most of my time with Petrica and Constica. I went to Petrica first thing in the morning and used his energy to try to get him to work on standing up and crawling, but he was just all over the place, so I just played with him and roughhoused instead. I felt like we had a real connection, which makes me really happy because they said in the writeups that he has a hard time getting out of being in his own world and actually interacting with people. But he was looking into my eyes, smiling at me, just in general playing with me and one time, he even started crawling (inching across the couch) over to me when I started giving Iuliana attention. Maybe it’s all in my head, but I really think he’s actually playing with me and not in his own world. Anyway, I did have to stop playing with him though, because Iuliana needed some attention. I just gave her a massage or something, but yeah. Then, at some point the workers brought Constica in and he really wanted attention. Usually he’s fine just chillin on the couch, but today he just wanted to be held. That was fine with me though – as long as he could be comforted, unlike the past few days when he’s just been upset no matter what. So I held Constica for a good hour or so while Petrica just played with some toy. The worker came in during that time and turned the tv on to VH1 and I thought it was going to be all raunchy, but it wasn’t! There were actually good music videos with good music and it wasn’t the nasty Romanian stuff that we’ve been having to watch lately. Anyway, finally Constica got sick of being in the living room, so I brought him to the back and came back and played with Mihai for a little bit. Then, the worker (Ani) fed us. It was really good bread this time but weird soup that had seeds in it for some odd, unknown reason. Anyway, after eating I had some more one on one time with Petrica and just calmed him down and layed with him on the couch, because I wanted him to be calm when he got fed. Then, it was time for them to get fed, and the worker let us feed them! First she was going to have me do Constica because she said Petrica was hard, but then she changed her mind and let me do him. He wasn’t all that hard! I mean, it was hard, but pretty much all of them are hard to feed. He was better than Mihai! Anyway, I succeeded in feeding him without getting stuff all over him. Then we put them all to bed and left! We went straight to the hospital again and we both went straight up to the 6th floor. We were planning on having me with Radu and her with Marta and then switching halfway through, but Marta’s mom was there and Radu was with Bri, so she went with Madaleine and I went with the boy at the end of the hall whose name I still don’t know. Well, I fell in love. I was with him the entire three hours and absolutely loved it. He’s so precious. I would just lie on the bed facing him and he’d stare right into my eyes while playing with his foot and sucking on his binkie and sometimes playing with my hands. We spent a while like that, and then he fell asleep in my arms while we were lying on the bed and I took a little secret nap too J. Then, this nurse who’s really nice, but really loud came in and woke him up. So we spent some more time like that, then I picked him up and sat Indian style, cradling him in my legs. He just sat there in the middle of my legs like a little sac of potatoes and put his head on my knee and sucked away on his binky. I took a bazillion pictures. After a while he started getting antsy again, so I layed him back down and he fell asleep again, so I read my book. When it was time to leave I tried to move him into his crib without waking him, but it didn’t work, and so he just watched me leave – that’s always heartbreaking. As I went downstairs to meet Shannon and leave I met up with Abbi and Bri who went down with me too. Shannon was down there with Jenna and as soon as I got there she was like “Where have you been?” in a really mad voice. I said “I was with the baby at the end of the hall on the 6th floor. I’ve been there the whole time.” She was like, “You were supposed to be here at 3:30 (it was 4 at the time).” And I was like, “no I wasn’t, I was supposed to be here at 4.” Then an argument ensued as to which time was correct, but lasted only a few seconds because she got up and stormed out of the hospital before I had a chance to say much of anything. The reason for the miscommunication was this: in the morning we’d been talking about when to leave the hospital. She brought up the subject by saying “hey, do you want to stay til just 3:30 at the hospital today?” And I, being slightly confused as to how many hours that would leave us, and thinking it would probably only leave us like 2.5 hours, and wanting to be nice, hesitatingly said, “well, I guess if you want to. I wasn’t planning on spending less than 3 hours, but I guess it’s ok if we do.” She, thinking that she’d been proposing 3 hours in the first place said, “Really? You’re ok with leaving early? I wasn’t going to suggest it, but that would be even better!” I was taken by surprise because I didn’t mean to suggest that if she hadn’t already and not actually wanting to go early said “wait, I thought that’s what you were suggesting in the first place. If you’re ok with going 3, then let’s go for three.” And that was kind of the end of it. The reason for the miscommunication was that I was thinking “ok we’ll stay for 3 hours” and she was thinking “ok, we’ll stay til 3:30.” That would’ve been fine if we’d gotten to the hospital at 12:30, because then leaving at 3:30 would have satisfied both of us, but since we got there at 1, she was still thinking “leave at 3:30” and I was thinking “stay for 3 hours and leave at 4.” What we should have done is re-discussed when we’d leave when we got there, but neither of us thought about it. Anyway, so when she stormed away, at first I was pretty mad because I thought it was really immature and I was frustrated at getting in trouble, again, for something I had never intended to do. Then, as we started to walk home – I with Bri and Abbi and she, up ahead, all by herself, I realized that I’d done the same thing lots of times before and that she was probably scathingly mad but also saying to herself “dang it. Now that I’ve walked ahead, this is going to be a really awkward walk home.” I realized it wasn’t actually that big of a deal to me and that it would be possible to let it go and that I might as well, just because she was having a bad day and I felt kind of bad for her. So I did. I stopped being mad at her and just hoped that she’d not push it any further. Well, when we got home she immediately went outside on the balcony and stayed there for a good portion of the night. I got on the internet and just started doing my thing. Later that night Mihai came over with some gifts he brought from his trip to the countryside and then Shannon and Melissa went to outreach. I tried to get some stuff done, but it was basically impossible, because Megan took over the internet and Jessica took over my computer (sooooo frustrating). So then I ended up just going to bed by like 9, thinking that way I’d be able to wake up early in the morning and get stuff done.