Little High, Little Low

Mornings have been absolutely great with my kids the last few days. I was worried yesterday being stuck inside all day because of the rain (believe it or not I used to hate going outside here), but it was great. Friday I had the three girls in the room on the floor giggling and climbing all over me (flying solo that day....my hair was a hopeless mess by noon). It was a blast. Monday I discovered they all like to be thrown up in the air...unfortunately there's a good weight difference between them too. Vallie gets the most air as she wieghs mabye 20 pounds. The other girls are alittle more chunky and harder to lift but hey! I could work up some arm muscle in the next 3 weeks!

At the apartments in the afternoon, Jena and I have been able to merge afara (go outside) with the copii. Usually it's great. We swing, we watch them walk around and it's a pretty chill 1 1/2 hours. Recently we discovered another park nearby with rocks instead of dirt and trash on the ground so we took the kids there. It's a bit more popular and today there were more kids than normal. With more kids and only 2 swings, there's more to fight over, and more toys for the kids to try and steal. Because the kids are obviously different in appearance, the kids are afraid of them, and even some of the parents stare at them like their freaks of nature or something. I'm not as attached to these kids as my morning kids. But it still boils my blood. I think I felt more hurt by the rejection than our kids did. I felt like I experience the pain of a mom who has a child with disabilities who can't make friends because he is different. I wish I could have gone over to the parents in my "oh-so-fluent-Romanian" and say "Look, yes these kids are different. But it's not their fault. Give the kids some slack, they don't have a lot going for them in life." It's amazing to see how different people view kids with disabilities here in Romania in comparison to the US. Kids still get teased but the US is so much more accepting. Romania is working on it with the development of special prep schools in attempt to later integratethe kids, but it has a long ways to go.


A picture from our Monastery trip back in early June. The lady on the right back row is Mario. She is a social worker here in Romania that BYU hires. She gets us all the "hook ups" we need to do what we need to do. She's awesome! And yes, that is all 13 of us American girls that are currently terrorizing the country for the last 2 1/2 months.