Life Liv Viaţă: What happened to January?

The mornings have been bitterly cold and last week I watched as an old man attempted to defrost his car door lock with a lighter. The windows in our buildings are covered with an icy sheet where radiator condensation rises and quickly cools to form a mottled glaze across the pane. The past 35 hours has seen a constant shower of dancing white snowflakes which collected on Cristi's eyelashes as we walked home after a morning of snow play with his friends. I understand completely the sentiment behind this being one of Julie Andrews favourite things. As I looked at his face so beautiful, rosy cheeks and eyes filled with joy and delight I too realised that snowflakes staying on eyelashes was one of my favourite things.

January has past in a blur and February has come to us in a flurry of sparkling white. The last month has been non stop and between a broken computer and not much time in the day to sit down and write I have I know neglected to blog. Now the computer seems to be fixed so I am back and I thought I'd just give a quick update on how the first month of 2012 has been for us.

School seems to be going OK for Cristi. Certainly the bullying has settled a little so that helps with his stress levels. School for me is going well. We have decided on our themes through till Spring and they will include the planets a focus on the Earth and the water cycle. For the moment we are working on time and so we have been making paper plate clocks with the children and trying to teach them how to tell the time and also what an amount of time feels like by timing them doing different tasks. It has been fun so far so here's hoping we keep their interest sparked.

I have been able to shuffle some things around so I have been visiting the hospital for at least 2 hours 6 days a week. I have been talking a lot with the social worker and trying to get the people feeding the babies to use different nipples on the bottles especially for baby J because he has a problem with his palette and therefore doesn't feed at all well with the enormous flowing nipples they currently use. I even brought a jar filled with new sterilised ones up. However (as I knew they would) they don't use them because as they tell me they don't have the time like I do to sit and feed them for that long.
It is hard to be amongst this, knowing that to change the top of the bottle and allow him to feed properly would in the long run save time and really help him but we can't seem to get them to use them. The good thing is at least it frustrates the social worker as much as myself!
We still have 2 babies up there who need desperately to go to homes but they are doing OK. Baby E is 3 months and really interactive. She is starting to make many noises and constantly smiles. She is an absolute joy! Baby J is 7 months and smaller than Baby E. He is still very stiff and needs a lot of interaction and love but, he is doing well and I love him very much. A few people have said how alike he is to Cristi at that age. So I know that with a lot of love, encouragement and work he can grow so much more than the clipped version of himself he is at the moment.
The good news is that a lady has been hired to work with the babies. She visits 3 afternoons from 2 till 6 pm so they are receiving a lot more care and interaction than they were 2 months ago. Small steps are making all the difference. Hopefully someday we can make it so that there once again is a staff there full time.

I can't think what more has been happening this month. My head is filled now with babies and school. I think it's better I turn to photos and move away from the words. I know photos are nicer (and quicker) to look at anyhow. So here's some things that January held for us.....

First trip to the dentist. Cristi was the first to jump in the chair and very proud to hear he has strong very clean white teeth. Not what I expected to hear for the boy who never wants to brush his teeth!

It was my birthday. Here is Cristi with the cake he decorated for me. We celebrated with my 9 little 'nieces and nephews' with a kids style party. Lots of musical bumps, statues and chairs and a crazy round of pass the parcel and the mars bar game. Was a great laugh!