Inside the Orphanage
Hi again. The days go by slowly and the time with Marie Aigerim goes so fast.
Today’s theme is “Inside the Orphanage” – with pictures at last.
The Orphanage is a very large building; we enter a side entrance, go up a flight of stairs to our area. Our area has a large sunny playroom with carpets and benches and toys, and a large sunny music room with carpets and chairs and a piano. It has an office or two, the office we went into the first day (translator-less) to speak with the doctors about what sort of baby I was looking for (Our low-grade Russian paid off and the people were – and are - soooo kind.)
It also has some baby rooms. Marie Aigerim lives in room 4, a microcosm where bathing, eating, playing, grooming, dressing, changing and sleeping all are performed in a large suite. The largest room is the playroom. Everything but bathing and sleeping happen here. Marie and the other active babies spend their active times off the floor, in walkers – we snuck in yesterday morning so we could show you the scene. It’s hoot.
The four walker-nauts on the floor are swarmed around the changing table and are riveted by the visiting Spanish families. The little boy looking to face us over the walker is Esen (S E N, pretty much how that is pronounced). He’s an alert little gem.
Marie Aigerim was quite busy on task and one of the caretakers took pity on us amateur parents and turned her to get her attention: then her little face lit up.
I don’t know if blogger can take video. Mitch has video of Marie Aigerim scooting right for us, face alight and grinning and babbling and toes paddling the floor. It’s a dear hoot.
We met another one of the Spanish families yesterday, they have the only baby girl of the group Sabina, and spoke with the mother Pilar. She told us that their son, Maksut, who will be three in November, came from Malutka two years ago. She spoke so gratefully and glowingly of Malutka and said she saw no reason to risk it by going anywhere else for his little sister.
The place is clean, kind, bright, sunny. The maintenance man stops and waves up close to Marie Aigerim when he passes us, most nannies give her a funny face and a noise and some fast Baby-Russian that makes her smile. They seem to know that giving the child (ok any human being) recognition as an individual and squirt of happiness is what really makes them different than just a place where babies are fed, washed and changed.
The women who work in Room 4 are dedicated and know what they are doing and are absolutely dear to the children. Here is an angel on earth: Galina. We hope to get video of her interactions with Marie Aigerim, first of all to soothe Marie Aigerim if she gets homesick for this dear woman, second to remind us what great folks they are, thirdly to keep social services from taking me away when I do things that soothe Marie Aigerim with familiarity (the porridge story comes later), and lastly, just because it makes us smile.
After any baby maintenance to be done, we go to the play room or music room and play for a while. Mitch takes Marie Aigerim “flying” or she makes good orangutan noises while rocking back and forth (we laugh, I love that sound and am doing nothing to discourage it), and we “walk” and play and chew and talk and rattle and look at the photo book and climb and roll around. The visit time overlaps with the start of the babies’ nap time, so Marie Aigerim starts to fade. This makes it a great time to go for a walk.
The grounds are good for walking and the promenade is a nice way to see the other children and caretakers and families and the drivers and the delivery man and the grounds cat and all the operations. Lots and lots of laundry. There must be a patron saint of laundry. There should be. Whoever put the high capacity washers in room four (we see them when we peek through the caregivers’ station) did a great thing.
Electric/gas dryers are not here yet. I note folks on the street and what they are wearing, now assessing it for suitability for line drying. Pretty much everything is a form of polyester, probably for the washing and drying. And folding. These women must fold about a billion pieces of clothing and fabric a year. The babies are clean and cared for. We are lucky to be here.
Marie likes to see everything while walking, and now, even though she twists her head around, I don’t try to put her forward-facing in the carrier (Mommy learns, not real fast, but she learns). She looks and listens and loves the walking, and dozes away.
Our visits end too soon. Sometimes when she is awake we put her back in a walker to continue walker-trek and her explorations, or sometimes we hand her to a nanny in the doorway who helps wave bye bye (“paka, paka”), but this time we took her right to her bed.
The sleeping room refuses to be photographed clearly.
Each baby has his or her own bed, and the mattress is flat in the foot-side half and slanted on the head-side half. Marie is happily habituated to her schedule, when it is time for a nap, it is time and she is generally satisfied to lie down and say goodbye. I think she is still too young for separation anxiety, and still too new to us to realize we are anything but exuberant clumsy caretakers (getting her dressed is a bumbling blast for all three of us), so the leave-taking is not too traumatic. It was once when we dawdled too long, and now we do not dawdle: we put her down and once she is settled, we bolt like a bomb has been set.
Only 2 hours and fortyfive minutes before Vladimir comes to drive us to the Orphanage again. I count the minutes.
Love to all,
Bobi
Today’s theme is “Inside the Orphanage” – with pictures at last.
The Orphanage is a very large building; we enter a side entrance, go up a flight of stairs to our area. Our area has a large sunny playroom with carpets and benches and toys, and a large sunny music room with carpets and chairs and a piano. It has an office or two, the office we went into the first day (translator-less) to speak with the doctors about what sort of baby I was looking for (Our low-grade Russian paid off and the people were – and are - soooo kind.)
It also has some baby rooms. Marie Aigerim lives in room 4, a microcosm where bathing, eating, playing, grooming, dressing, changing and sleeping all are performed in a large suite. The largest room is the playroom. Everything but bathing and sleeping happen here. Marie and the other active babies spend their active times off the floor, in walkers – we snuck in yesterday morning so we could show you the scene. It’s hoot.
The four walker-nauts on the floor are swarmed around the changing table and are riveted by the visiting Spanish families. The little boy looking to face us over the walker is Esen (S E N, pretty much how that is pronounced). He’s an alert little gem.
Marie Aigerim was quite busy on task and one of the caretakers took pity on us amateur parents and turned her to get her attention: then her little face lit up.
I don’t know if blogger can take video. Mitch has video of Marie Aigerim scooting right for us, face alight and grinning and babbling and toes paddling the floor. It’s a dear hoot.
We met another one of the Spanish families yesterday, they have the only baby girl of the group Sabina, and spoke with the mother Pilar. She told us that their son, Maksut, who will be three in November, came from Malutka two years ago. She spoke so gratefully and glowingly of Malutka and said she saw no reason to risk it by going anywhere else for his little sister.
The place is clean, kind, bright, sunny. The maintenance man stops and waves up close to Marie Aigerim when he passes us, most nannies give her a funny face and a noise and some fast Baby-Russian that makes her smile. They seem to know that giving the child (ok any human being) recognition as an individual and squirt of happiness is what really makes them different than just a place where babies are fed, washed and changed.
The women who work in Room 4 are dedicated and know what they are doing and are absolutely dear to the children. Here is an angel on earth: Galina. We hope to get video of her interactions with Marie Aigerim, first of all to soothe Marie Aigerim if she gets homesick for this dear woman, second to remind us what great folks they are, thirdly to keep social services from taking me away when I do things that soothe Marie Aigerim with familiarity (the porridge story comes later), and lastly, just because it makes us smile.
After any baby maintenance to be done, we go to the play room or music room and play for a while. Mitch takes Marie Aigerim “flying” or she makes good orangutan noises while rocking back and forth (we laugh, I love that sound and am doing nothing to discourage it), and we “walk” and play and chew and talk and rattle and look at the photo book and climb and roll around. The visit time overlaps with the start of the babies’ nap time, so Marie Aigerim starts to fade. This makes it a great time to go for a walk.
The grounds are good for walking and the promenade is a nice way to see the other children and caretakers and families and the drivers and the delivery man and the grounds cat and all the operations. Lots and lots of laundry. There must be a patron saint of laundry. There should be. Whoever put the high capacity washers in room four (we see them when we peek through the caregivers’ station) did a great thing.
Electric/gas dryers are not here yet. I note folks on the street and what they are wearing, now assessing it for suitability for line drying. Pretty much everything is a form of polyester, probably for the washing and drying. And folding. These women must fold about a billion pieces of clothing and fabric a year. The babies are clean and cared for. We are lucky to be here.
Marie likes to see everything while walking, and now, even though she twists her head around, I don’t try to put her forward-facing in the carrier (Mommy learns, not real fast, but she learns). She looks and listens and loves the walking, and dozes away.
Our visits end too soon. Sometimes when she is awake we put her back in a walker to continue walker-trek and her explorations, or sometimes we hand her to a nanny in the doorway who helps wave bye bye (“paka, paka”), but this time we took her right to her bed.
The sleeping room refuses to be photographed clearly.
Each baby has his or her own bed, and the mattress is flat in the foot-side half and slanted on the head-side half. Marie is happily habituated to her schedule, when it is time for a nap, it is time and she is generally satisfied to lie down and say goodbye. I think she is still too young for separation anxiety, and still too new to us to realize we are anything but exuberant clumsy caretakers (getting her dressed is a bumbling blast for all three of us), so the leave-taking is not too traumatic. It was once when we dawdled too long, and now we do not dawdle: we put her down and once she is settled, we bolt like a bomb has been set.
Only 2 hours and fortyfive minutes before Vladimir comes to drive us to the Orphanage again. I count the minutes.
Love to all,
Bobi
posted by Bobi @ 7:21 PM
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