July 23, 2008 (Wednesday)
The Lord’s Hand in my Life: Good guys are in this world.

The day started off with putting forms together for Mario in order to take care of our Visas. Apparently we are only allowed to stay in Romania for three months without a Visa, and we are here a few weeks longer than that – so we had to fill out some papers for Mario so our time in Romania could be extended. Hopefully that all goes through properly. That would be a major bummer if we had to leave immediately.

Whitney S. and Elisa went to visit Mihai (a little boy Elisa worked with when she was here two years ago who is now adopted). So that left me with all the kiddos. It was a little hectic to try and get around to all of them, but I managed to play with the majority of them – even if it wasn’t for a really long time.

The most exciting event of the day was when Maria got poop all down my pants. It was lovely. I was playing with her and all of a sudden I looked down and her pants were completely soaked through. Then I looked at my pants and they had poop all over them as well – not to mention I had some on my hand. Remind you she is 9 years old – so it wasn’t little baby poop. The joys. I’m becoming so prepared to be a mom haha…Then I tried to get her not to move so she wouldn’t get it everywhere before a worker changed her, but of course there were no workers to be found. Luckily Deanna walked by and she ran and got a worker. Thank goodness.

Later Florine came in and chatted for a while I was in the room playing with the kids. Although he’s soft spoken he is still a tease. Andrei picked out two dolls to play with and I was like “those are not for boys – those are for girls.” Of course I still let him play with them, but Florine started laughing at me and mimicking what I said to Andrei. Andrei really liked Florine. He went and crawled into his lap and played dolls. So cute.

A few minutes later Andrea was walking around and she fell and started crying. I immediately went to pick her up to comfort her, but one of the workers stopped me and said to leave her alone. I was a little annoyed because when babies hurt themselves you are supposed to pick them up and kiss and hug their “boo boo.” Regardless, I listened to her. I think Florine could tell I was bothered and two seconds later he gave the worker kind of a dirty look and picked Andrea up and bounced her for a second until she quieted. For some reason it was really attractive to me the way he handled the entire situation. He’s going to be a good dad. It’s nice to see that there are still good guys in this world. For a girl who loves kids there is nothing sexier than when a guy is good with them. So adorable…I love it. On the way home Mary and I were chatting about how important it is for guys we date to love kids…and if he doesn’t he’s out of there. It is sooooo true.

At the hospital there were a ton of babies today…I went and visited “laughing baby girl” today. I wanted to get a video of her laughing the other day, but I couldn’t because my camera was broken. Elisa was nice enough to let me borrow hers today, but “laughing baby” wouldn’t laugh. I was so sad. So basically there is about five minutes on video of me attempting to make her laugh. She only laughed twice for a second…I swear kids know when the video tape is on…no fair!

I also found the baby that has the longest eye lashes ever. He is soooo cute. I played with him for a while. He is a little chunker, but boy does he giggle easy. I would bury my head into his neck and kiss it, and he would just laugh and laugh and laugh. It was sooo cute. I LOVE babies…I want many kids.

I have a funny story about the sanitation of the hospital from an experience today. Here goes. In one of the rooms there are two babies about the same age so Annie and I were each holding one. A few minutes after holding them the nurse came in and gave us each a bottle to feed them. Annie’s baby got done first and mine was taking a long time. The nurse came in and saw that my baby was still drinking so she had me take the bottle out of the baby’s mouth to see if the slit in the top was allowing enough milk to come out. There wasn’t – so the nurse simply switched the nipple with the other baby’s bottle (which was the one the other baby had just drank her entire bottle from). It didn’t matter that germs would be passed…maybe they figure they are both sick so it’s no big deal? Annie and I just started laughing when she switched them. Oh Romania. Good times…

After the hospital Annie went with me to look at scarves that were on sale. A bunch of the girls bought them because they were such a good deal, and I didn’t go with them the other day…so I went and bought some. I wanted to give them away as gifts, but I kind of like them all a lot. Not Good. I’m going to have to sort through them to see which ones I can handle giving away…I bought one in particular with my Mom Bonnie in mind that I think she will like. Nothing too fancy, but I think it is a sophisticated scarf just like she is.

After dinner Annie needed to use the internet so I went with her to the girls’ apartment. While I was sitting there working on some homework Elyse walked in and was like “Did you know your friend Kristi is engaged? Todd’s really excited about it.” Immediately my stomach dropped. I just looked at her for a second – then I asked her how she knew. She replied “Facebook.” Talk about an immediate rush of mixed feelings. I’m happy for her, but sad for a friendship that is going to go goodbye pretty soon. It happens whenever people get married. What’s even more amazing about the situation is that I was informed by a friend who found out by Facebook. Classic. As Mary and I like to say “another one bites the dust.”

Mindy was sitting in the room when Elyse told me the news and was like “she’s your roommate in the fall right?” I replied that she was…Then Mindy said “it’s okay Whitney we can visit each other every day.” Then she started laughing and went off about how when we go back to school she’s going to be “the weird girl” who has pictures of her kids footprints plastered all over the wall with a voice recording of her kids playing over and over. (We are taking foot and hand prints and voice recordings of all our kids.) We were all rolling with laughter…we’re all going to go home alone and broke missing our kids – but it’s worth it because we are all better people and more fulfilled from the experiences we have been so blessed to have here in Romania.